


In the House that Skywalker Built

by Aicosu



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Boners, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Romance, Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkwardness, BDSM, Ben has a crush on Padme, F/M, Implied Ben Solo/Padme, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Light BDSM, M/M, Modern Era, Multi, Rey and Hux marriage, Threesome - F/M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-02-23 16:26:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13193985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aicosu/pseuds/Aicosu
Summary: Ben Solo inherits Anakin Skywalker's house and deals with a lot more trouble then he imagined concerning it and his lawyer. (And his lawyer's wife.)He also discovers his grandmother was frustratingly beautiful. (And said lawyer's wife looks a lot like her.)





	1. Inheritance

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Alania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alania/pseuds/Alania) for inadvertently inspiring my idea that Ben Solo has a stupid crush on Padme. And thanks to [Serenechemnerd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenechemnerd/pseuds/serenechemnerd) for inadvertently inspiring my need to make this also about BDSM. 
> 
> This is probably a good candidate to the weirdest thing I've written.

There’s more fucking history in his last name then there is for the entire planet.

He thinks it as he tosses a big box of shit onto the table, flipping off the dusty cardboard lid. It fills the air with thick wafts of grey. Like smoke. It's papers.

More fucking papers.

He didn’t imagine that inheriting the Skywalker Manor was going to be this… droll.

Ben pulled out sheafs and folders of… tax reports? No… Insurance documents. Trash. Everything was insured under his name now.

It was his.

Everything was. After years and years of it. Of emancipation, of debt, of struggle and then yelling and yelling. So much fucking yelling in his damn family. Then school and exams and jobs and lawyers. He shook his head, thinking of his flame-haired lawyer and his crisp accent. After years of all that, and then courts and beneficiaries and company meetings and… bullshit, all of it was bullshit—

It was finally his.

All this… paper.

He shoved the box backward. It hissed against the dark cherry wood. Old. Imported. Rich—no—wealthy.

The Skywalkers had been… everything. Energy. Oil. Investment. Tech. Military. Politics. His grandfather had built an Empire.

Sort of.

One that had been abandoned, waiting for the next heir. A company frozen in it's assets, it's money, it's power.

His uncle, a fool, was too concerned with dairy products to take up any legal process of inheriting millions. Billions, even.

And his mother had been just wrong.

“Associating my position as Senator to that company is just going to make me look corrupt. Which is what your grandfather and his schemes were. Corrupt.”

No.

Ben turned, kicking his sneakers at more boxes, listening to old silverware clang around. There was another behind it that seemed innocuous and he hefted the weight onto the dining table with ease.

Shoving off the lid he almost cursed at the sight of even more papers but paused.

Photos.

Just… piles and piles of raw photographs. Some large ones, some tiny ones, all slotted into each other like they had been packed in a haste. Even a few with old frames jutting out here and there. He pulled one of the bigger framed pieces out gently, corners of other pictures catching on it and fluttering back down to the box when he shook it free.

It was his grandfather. No surprise there.

But also… her.

Grandfather had been very, very, young when he came into wealth. Power. Whatever it was you wanted to call it. It started with the military. That much he knew. And the seemed photo-aligned with that story.

Anakin Skywalker stared at the camera like a soldier did a gun. Like it had the potential to go off. Or maybe he did. (So he had heard.) He was stock still, straight, severe. The restraining military uniform he sported didn't help. With a jawline that looked familiar to Ben (it was his) and eyes lighter then you’d expect but making his face no softer. There was a scar, too, over his brow, cutting into the top of his cheek.

Shrapnel, he had read, in magazine articles detailing the billionaire's life. Shrapnel from a bomb that had blown away his right hand when he’d caught it to save his infantry.

Fucking incredible.

Grandfather was everything Ben wanted. Everything he wasn’t. Everything he had worked so hard to be in order to qualify for his family’s legacy. Ruthless and powerful, demanding the attention of everyone even at so young an age, hard-working to the point of obsession. Ben had tried to emulate it all and by legal terms of career income and grade point average and evaluated aspirations, he had achieved it. (He hadn’t ever caught a fucking grenade, but.)

And yet…

 _She_ was there too. In the photo.

His grandmother.

Padmé Amidala Naberrie Skywalker. 22nd Queen of Naboo, a relative of the Royal House and Senator to the delegation of United Nations for years. Beloved by everyone (he was told.) Queen. Senator. Freedom figure. Mother. Lover.

Ben swallowed.

She was so small. Perhaps that’s because she was standing next to her insanely tall husband, a whole foot taller than her. He eclipsed her. Maybe in more ways than one, the way the story went.

She wasn’t smiling, in the photo, not exactly. But she looked content, with soft doe eyes and a little nose. A fairytale princess. A real princess, actually.

He didn’t really feel like they looked alike. Not like he did his grandfather.

His mother had once said, when he was still young and gangly, that he must have gotten his eyelashes from his grandma because her own had never been so long.

Padme’s were indeed large and thick. Curling perfectly around the largeness of her gaze. His fist rubbed at his eye thoughtlessly, feeling his own.

He set the photo back in the box, picking up another, caught now, in the middle of moving his things and cleaning out the old, in memories not his own.

The next picture was her again.

(They were all her, it was nothing but her, he’d learn.)

She was laughing, wildly in this one, and it made Ben flush, awkwardly, seeing a little of his mom’s smile in her teeth and cheeks, but also from having gone from a formal, serious looking picture of his grandparents in tight, rich clothes, to half-naked, on the beach, laughing.

Grandpa was there too, behind her, but obscured, smiling into her shoulder.

No, she was just tiny. He could tell with her sitting, legs bent, that she would come up no taller than his sternum.

She was small.

Beautiful.

Ben tossed the picture, yanked out a handful more and felt his head swim.

She looked back at him and didn’t. Caught by the camera, candidly. Sometimes smiling and waving a hand as if to stop the photo from existing and failing, or sometimes not having noticed at all, listening intently to others or reading. Lots of her reading. (He’d taken them. His grandfather. Probably.)

Ben dropped the batch forcefully, letting them all flutter to the box before sliding it back, staring at it.

He shook his head. She was dead now anyway. They both were. That story ended terribly, and there was no need to keep any of it if he was the one who owned the house now.

He didn't want to think too hard about it anyway.

* * *

It was fucking impossible to get away from her though.

The manor was massive. Enormous. Way larger than he originally thought. 36 acres and 15 rooms, not including the ballroom, dining room, smoking room, billiard room, kitchen, and bathrooms, made the old house a veritable maze.

And despite having been ownerless and uninhabited due to legal ramifications it was fully furnished and had gone undisturbed until Ben had moved in.

So it had paintings and photos still nailed to walls, decorating hallways, lining dressers and shelves.

And grandma was fucking _everywhere._

She had portraits in droves; fully painted, ornately framed, with different angles and versions of her in various dresses and manners of expression. They littered the house as if she had been the real commodity of the Skywalker enterprise.

At first, he had thought his grandmother vain. After all, there were no pictures of his grandfather anywhere aside from the photo box back in the dining room. (A box he had taped thoroughly shut, for good.)

But then he found, even more, paperwork... and grandmother’s death certificate.

By the time Anakin Skywalker had owned the manor, Padme had died.

And the paintings were just that. Paintings. Recreations. Daydreams.

When he had read the document, Ben had been in the Anakin’s old study, and he dropped the paper to stare at the frames of Padme lining the walls, and felt like despite having spent his whole life trying to fit into his grandfather’s shoes he had missed something so important and so crucial that he wasn't anything like him at all.

* * *

She had a bedroom in a house she never lived in.

Once he pulled out all the junk from the main rooms, he started going bedroom by bedroom.

He’d begin by dragging out every piece of furniture and throwing away those that were just too moldy or dust-logged to repair. Then he’d scrub from top to bottom, mopping, sweeping, wiping the windows and wallpaper, before putting back what he could or creating a big pile to drive to the dump.

Rinse and repeat.

He never touched the paintings though. And of course, there were some in every fucking room. They stayed exactly where they were, watching him work like a gaggle of handmaidens watching a strange man clean their bedrooms. Cautious and scandalized.

Hiring a cleaning service or help of any kind was an idea abandoned a long time ago. The thought of people in his grandfather’s house (his house) was… odd. Maybe it was because he’d worked his entire life to earn the place. Or maybe it was because he actually enjoyed the discipline. The process and time consumption of listening to music off his phone, hefting tables and dressers in and out, sweating, strategizing the space.

It felt good. Cathartic. Like working a new muscle in his body. Making it stronger. Making himself stronger.

But then he got to her room.

It was undoubtedly hers. It had to be.

While all the others had various degrees of use, sheet covers to protect from dust or random boxes of belongings and portraits, this one had none of that.

It was round, the back wall nothing but windows tall as the ceiling, letting in the setting sun of the work day like there was no windows there at all. An open waterfall of sunlight and Persian rugs. Dust fluttered the air like little flecks of flyaway dandelions. They danced along the surfaces of untouched mahogany, around a canopy bed of gold and russet sheets, and through crystals twinkling from the light fixtures.

The vanity, the wardrobes, and the mannequins; mannequins of dresses lining the side of the room, all shone brilliantly in the most ostentatious of materials.

It was like there was a symphony of sight rather than sound.

Ben stood at the door; sweat slicked down through his shirt, dirty shoes on the carpet, and hands curling spackling paste into his fist. He couldn’t hear his phone this far down the hall. Whatever rock band playing was nothing but a warbled warning. Distant and uninvited. He felt small. Foreign.

It was untouched. Perfect. Pretty and waiting. Waiting for the woman who’d never seen it, who’d never gotten the chance to move in. Waiting for her to sit at the vanity and comb the long beautiful willow brown hair Ben knew she had, because of every fucking portrait that showed every fucking detail. From the small thin pink of her lips to the large, all-encompassing amorous eyes that were there every time he turned a corne—

Ben closed the room, shutting out the sunlight and silencing his mind.

Nope.

The whole house was big enough to ignore one room.

His hands caressed a thumb over the gold handle. It felt cold. Shut. He unlatched it, peeking the door just enough to let some of those dust fireflies out. The sun sliced his face in half.

There.

That was enough.

* * *

The rest of it was more or less simple.

The house had its problems. The first of which being, well, it was enormous.

During the first week, Ben had taken a day to clean the yard. He carried bags of soil into the courtyard, raked up leaves and even at one point, figured out a chainsaw he’d ordered to cut branches off some of the oaks.He had no idea what he was doing, but the area had looked nice when he was done with it.

He’d taken a break from that to change the rooms by the kitchen into his bedroom, his office, and to create a makeshift living room complete with a new couch from the local department store. (It looked completely wrong besides an antique tea table but it was comfortable.)

But when he had emerged back outside, he found the yard once again leaf-filled and ivy-grown.

So, there were some hang-ups.

But his moving truck was gone. His clothes were in a closet, and the kitchen was stocked.

So now he stood, with a small bowl of cereal to tide over his hunger from moving in granite countertops (to replace the stone ones), staring at the little area of the house he’d made his.

Staring at his grandma, specifically.

It was getting hard not to. She was, again, _fucking everywhere._

The one he was looking at now was actually one of the bigger ones, mounted center stage in a gaudy frame on the living room wall.

His LED flatscreen TV sat on the floor, unwired and waiting.

Ben had to take the painting down to put the TV up.

Padme stared back at him, unwavering. Every bit the regal little thing he assumed she was. Her brow was low in this painting, looking challenging, even with the serene renaissance type smile she sported. Her hair was done up in silver. It looked like a cage. Or an ornate rapier handle to the thin blade that was her stature. She was all greys and silvers. Flecks of purple flickered in the gems wreathed in her neck. A woman made of amethyst.

The dress was one up in her room. Ben didn’t want to think too hard about how quickly he recognized it.

He chewed, finishing the last bites of his meager brunch before leaving it to cross the room.

She had to come down. This was fucking ridiculous. He could take it down, mount the TV, and then take down the rest throughout the entire house. That would be the work today. Good. Yes.

He stopped, grasping each side of the gold frame. It was dusty almost as soon as he touched it, fingertips sliding across that quiet fuzziness of age. Still, the frame felt heavy. Old. Important. The weight of the entire thing was like a giant stone blocking the front of a damn that had been there forever.

He hefted it, clenching his jaw as he did, hyper-aware of his stupidly huge body and how clumsy he could potentially be with the delicate canvas of the painting.

It felt heavier than the fucking granite.

But it came down, thudding next to his TV.

He breathed, not knowing he’d stopped.

Ben stared at Padme, her eyes level with his knees now.

He looked up at the wall.

Th space where the painting had been was outlined like a ghost. The rest of the wallpaper bleached by the sun from the windows. An artificial tan line. Like a stripe of bare delicate skin that had been covered for so long. A mark where a wedding ring on a finger had been maybe.

“Fucking Christ.”

Ben grasped the dusty frame and heaved, sliding the painting back up his palms and dragging it down the wall until it caught the nail and sat once more.

He centered it, delicately, glancing at the Naboo Queen’s gentle face with an annoyed look before leaving to wash his bowl in the sink.

_Fine._

* * *

It gets easier as the days pass into weeks, and soon he approaches a month in his new home.

He learns to live with the hundreds of portraits of her.

It’s like having a roommate, almost.

Which is already a new feeling for Ben. With no siblings, only one friend, and no lover to speak of. Not for lack of trying, but he learned it’s hard to have the time for more than a random date here and there when one is busy trying to grow up under a roster of requirements to inherit a multi-billion dollar conglomerate.

He starts memorizing certain paintings. Starts setting his eyes on them when he talks on the phone.

Like now.

“I’m not exactly—” He tried. But the associate chairman has begun talking again and Ben leans back in his little office.

He imagined his grandfather worked like this too, once. Maybe doing the same thing. Talking to employees on the phone and staring at Padme as she stands with prim hands in a pink and turquoise robe. Hair down. Eyes cast. Demure. Calming.

It helps.

“You have to consider the level of change in a short amount of time, Mr. Skywalker. Our partners in admin and the stockholders for the relative branches—”

Ben cringes, fingers pressing into the bridge of his nose as he tries to keep up with the jargon. He’s horrible at this. He is. He knows it. He can staple new fabric to wood chairs, he can shingle a roof, clean gutters, install new levers for water pumps, but actually owning this entire fucking company is lost to him.

He’d only wanted the house.

But he’s sitting here, in his ratty boots, with a 10-yr old hoodie, making a conference call to senior directors twice his age with numerous years in business and whatever certificates you need to be in the 1%.

“My only request.” He cuts in, knuckles rasping on the carved wood of the desk, harsh. Focusing. The associate stops. “Was for the board to refer to my representative. Please.”

“Mr. Skywalker, I insist—”

“Look, I—” He stood, walking across the room, placing his arm above the portrait of Padme. His finger traces the brush stroke of the sash on her waist. A rose pink. It looked soft. “I’m really busy. Just… do that. Good?”

“Please, Sir, the shareholders are upset—”

“Good.” He hangs up. Shoves the phone into his jeans.

It’s quiet instantly. A heavy quiet. The taste of his anxiety and the tenseness of his incapability stir in his mouth like a bitter mouthwash.

He’d probably get scolded for that later. But they had called him, so what else was going to happen?

“Were you any good at this?” He asks.

He’s aware he’s talked to a fucking portrait the second he’s done it but tried to ignore the embarrassment.

“Senator.” He addresses again.

She’s frozen in time, frozen in turpentine and pigment. She doesn't answer.

And then Ben realizes he doesn’t really… have to ask.

His phone is back in his palm, and he drags the browser onto his screen. He types in the letters to P-a-d-m-e with a delicate care as if to not be heard by her paintings.

 _Did you mean Padme Amidala Skywalker?_ His phone asks.

Of course he fucking did.

He finds a video.

Ben’s thumb hovers.

He’d listened to his grandfather before. Had read stories of him. Collected magazines. Listened to recordings.

But his grandfather’s glory days had been in days of technicolor and digital film. His images had been crisp and severe. Anakin Skywalker had talked in front of microphones the way any former soldier would. With efficiency. And all that coverage had been when he was old. Greying.

He hadn’t risen to any semblance of power until his wife had died.

So… Ben had never bothered to research before then. A big fucking mistake in hindsight now.

His thumb tapped play just as his eyes darted to the painting and then back to the screen.

_Queen Amidala press address for Republic occupation._

The image was fuzzy, blurred, like a dream projected into his phone. The colors were pastel in their aged saturation. But he could still recognize the ornateness of her. The vibrancy. She was a tower of emerald silks and gold filigree, like the ivy growing up the side of the house. Her face: pale, lips: pink, eyes: dark. She was folded in a seat and moving like an unreal sculpture (a painting) and fucking hell, Christ, she was real.

“A pleasure to have you Majesty Amidala, especially at a time like this one.”

“‘ _Senator’_ , please. I’m here on behalf of those in the U.N. that find the—”

Nope. No. Nope. His thumb smacked on the screen, hitting the exits hard enough to make the LED ripple.

No way. No. That was—that was too much.

He didn’t need to hear any more of that.

The phone slid into his pants and Ben shifted, head twisting any direction but in the ones that were eye level with all the Padme's looking back at him.

Easier.

Yeah, right.

* * *

It had been a bad idea.

The video.

The rest of the day had been full of the screaming grinding of the chainsaw, dragging tree branches into a flatbed hitched to his car. He’d even driven it into the first leg of town, bought some groceries and driven back.

He’d been happily and forcefully preoccupied. He filled his head with noise.

But he’d dreamed.

He’d dreamed in a digital blur of baby pink hues and melting paint. Of expensive sashes caressing his cheek and little fingers delving into his hair, pushing back locks and curling at the shell of his ear like his mother had done before he’d completely disowned her.

She’d whispered. _Her_. Of course, how could it not be her? She’d whispered to him things he couldn’t make out. His name maybe. Maybe other things. She hummed.

She smelled like dust and perfume and old wood. Her skirts were velvet. Warm. But cold too. They were in an endless sea of fallen leaves in their courtyard at sunset, and he could see her smiling face despite having his eyes closed, asleep in his sleep. A dream in a dream.

Her fingers teased his neck, rubbed his shoulders.

He’d looked up into large soulful eyes, black like his own. Like grandmother like grandson. He shivered. She smiled.

Crystals on her headwear tickled his chin when she leaned down above him. Lips pressing into his own. Her hands pushing flat on his chest. Hot. Cold. Warm. Silk skin and heat and god, no—Jesus.

He woke, with a jolt of his eyes and a freeze of the rest of his body.

Ben heaved, staring at nothing, staring at his empty, portrait-less room, cold, hot, shirt and sweatpants soaked and hair matted to his forehead.

...cock hard on his thigh. Wet.

“God—fucking—dammit.” He hissed, immediately sitting up.

His stomach pinched with a shot of ache, of need, flexing his body as he sat, blinking blearily away the baby blue of his dream. Of her body above his and the belated sensation of a kiss.

It was done then. He was officially a fucking pervert.

A fucking worthless piece of shit like he’d always been. Billions and billions of dollars, and a manor, and a company if thousands, couldn't change him from being a weird, freak outcast.

His hands scraped harshly through his hair, digging. Punishing. Because eventually, they settled on the outline of flesh in his lap. Eventually, they started jerking his cock.

“Hgn.” He groaned, yanking, enjoying the feeling of his sheet surrounding his dick.

It felt like a silk dress.

“FUCK!” He yelled, angry, annoyed, ashamed, and enslaved now. Another notch of a fuck-up in the family tree to match the rest.

More like a Skywalker every day. Just like he wanted.

_Great._

 

 


	2. Housewarming

He was nervous.

“I promise rabbit, It’s only for a few minutes and then we will be on our way, right away, but you know how these things go, I’ve told you, haven’t I?”

Rey yawned, sleepily, barely listening to the reassurance she was getting. She’d never complained to begin with.

His cold, delicate fingertips danced around her ankles, strapping gold shoes to her feet as she sat tiredly in the bed. Routine, really.

“Oh, pretty,”

“Do you like these ones? I thought maybe you’d hate them, I ordered another pair but these match the dress nicely, and I thought I could do your hair—ah, your nails,”

His hand darted out to snatch her fingers as she covered the second yawn in a series of awake-to-late and up-too-early antics.

He pulled her palms into his, leaning backward where he sits on the floor to drag a glass organizer of nail polish and perfumes to him.

He picks a color, doesn't ask if she likes it, and settles in on his knees. She stares at his nice silken pants and his blazer as they wrinkle in that position.

Really nervous then. Rey smiles knowingly. Endearing herself to the sight.

“Could we just skip it?

He nearly coughs in his tsk. “N—no, no, no, we must go. Unfortunately. My communiques with the man have been simply infuriating this week—you wouldn’t believe the tone he takes with me, he—” He pauses to breathe, and to delicately stripe her thumb in red, before continuing. Rey grins wide, having only asked to watch him fret like this. “I must go and give him a talking to, and have him sign the representative approvals. After that, we can be away.”

She nods, but he doesn’t see it.

It’s not just rare to see him like this, it’s surprising.

Or maybe not. This is Mr. Skywalker after all. _THE_ Mr. Skywalker.

The Mr. Skywalker she’d heard him whine and complain about since they met. The one who always sent him reeling expletives, the one who caused him to leave parties just to talk on the phone for hours. The one person he talked more about then himself.

A longtime business partner. That’s how he had described it.

But longtime business partners she’d met. Longtime business partners were ones he’d raise a wine glass to and nod, disinterested and slightly annoyed. He’d smile and shake their hand and specifically block them from shaking hers. Ever the private man and ever the elitest.

But she’d never met Mr. Skywalker.

She knew the name, of course. Not just from his incessant mentioning of it, but because it was a name labeled onto a lot of products, papers, articles, boxes, and goods. There used to be a big billboard with it that she would park under in her old car. She'd turn her lights of and fall asleep staring at it, wondering what it was to 'walk a sky' anyway.

The Skywalker account had been a huge reason for why he had gotten here, now. As the owner of his father’s old company. His company. Of his expanded success. She knew this.

Knew that meant she would be on her best behavior without him needing to ask. Not that he would. Even now, he seemed more concerned with appeasing her through his attempts to impress.

Impress, that was it! Gold shoes, expensive dress, his best dark suit, and monogram cufflinks. He had even dragged pomade through his hair until it was as crisp clean as a soft ginger zen garden.

Sure, they had a party to get to. But really, it was this man that he wanted to impress. He griped and complained all the time, but in retrospect, Rey realized that it was just his way of dealing with… admiration? Someone he considered an equal?

She was awake now.

Suddenly she was filled with excitement at the idea that her husband, Hux, the richest and most powerful man she knew, had some sort of superior mentor she never known about. Maybe a father-figure better than the actual one. She'd never realized it before. And now they were going to go to his house.

When he finished her nails he pushed her hands up to her face.

Rey blew on them dutifully as he started smoothing her skirts a tad compulsively.

“There, beautiful, yes, or, hm, perhaps… maybe the green gown instead I—I thought the red and gold, for holiday, and you're so lovely in it. But green brings out the browns in your hair—"

“I like the red.”

“The red then.” He nodded curtly, abandoning the doubt immediately and helping them both to a stand. He breathed, more for himself than for her. “I promise it will be really quick.”

She shrugged, it didn’t matter to her. It wasn’t as if they needed to do anything special today—oh!

“Happy Christmas, Huxley.”

He seemed surprised at first, but smiled, leaning close to kiss her softly. Cheek by cheek, gentle and precise, then on her lips, slow but warm.

“Happy Christmas, rabbit.”

* * *

He gets worse as they get closer.

Her husband spends the ride detailing every little annoyance Mr. Skywalker has caused him over the years. And if Rey didn’t know him any better, she might have been convinced that he loathed the man.

“... It's incomprehensible, to hang up on an entire board of directors, the people who’ve been in charge of the company for twenty years— Of course, they’re all blind and stupid and don’t deserve to hold the responsibility they’ve been given—really—a table surrounded by un-eulogized gravestones—”

Rey laughs, turning from the window to look at him with mirth in her eyes.

He glances at her, brows up, surprised but then amused, smiling at making his wife laugh.

“—corpses with delayed decomposition.” He continues, just to make her giggle. She does, snorting. “Nevertheless they have to be treated correctly. There’s a nuance to this business Solo just doesn’t understand.”

“Your papers will fix that?” She asks, turning back to the green flashing by their window. They were almost an hour and a half out of the city. Wow, Skywalker really lived out in the middle of nowhere.

“Well it won’t change his ignorance, no, but it gives the Hux name more power to make the decisions for him. Oh—and watch for our turn on your side, rabbit, it really comes out of nowhere.”

“You mean this one?”

“Damn—yes—one second.”

They slow, and Rey realizes how he almost missed it. Lines of giant trees trail up to meet their road, obscuring the stone pillars on either side of the entrance. A sentry of foliage. They were green and towering, with long billowing leaves that nearly caress the top of their car as they enter, like curtains.

“This is where he lives?”

Hux hummed. “This is the Skywalker manor, yes.” He leaned forward to peer out the windshield. “The original Skywalker had it built for his wife before she died. It has a good amount of acres to it. A winery on the edge near the lake. What a waste.”

The sun glittered through the trees until suddenly they were gone, and the house was there. Like magic.

It's dark. Enormous. Iron-wrought and ivy-grown. A monster of a thing.

“Gruesome.” Hux sniffed. “So medieval. Can’t stand the Victorian's and their bargeboards or gables. See, there, the gold trim along all the black? So ostentatious.”

She knew he was pointing out the features of the architecture but Rey couldn’t quite comprehend it. There were just too many details, too many facets of… black and stone and gold. A marvel of masonry and steelwork and paint. It was cool.

"Cool."

"Please."

It only got bigger and bigger as they approached it. An effect liken to watching a dollhouse turn into a whale. The windows themselves looked large enough to drive a car through.

They circled around a small fountain, which sat still and unmoving, green moss growing off it. Forgotten.

The tires crunched to a stop and Hux shut off the car while looking oddly around him. “Where’s the valet?”

They get out, and Rey had to look straight up above her to even try to see the second floor, let alone the top of the thing.

“He lives… here?” She scrunches her face, imagining Skywalker in one of those windows, peering down. A small wrinkled old man in a terrible velvet suit. A real-life Christmas scrooge.

“Indeed. Come, they must be off for holiday. We won’t take long.” He meets her around the car and they hike up the shallow stairs to the door.

There’s a knocker. That’s how old this insane property is. Rey looked at it dubiously, confirming there wasn’t an intercom or buzzer.

She reached for the handle but Hux stopped her, grasping the sculpted metal latch instead to bang on the door in a short, polite, thunk.

“We wait for the doorman.” He smiles.

She rocks back on her heels, clasping her hands together in front of her.

They wait.

She shivers.

Hux knocks again, impolite and loud this time.

Rey wonders if they have to wait for Mr. Skywalker to come down in his wheelchair, in one of those automatic lifts that roll him down the stairs from the commercials. Eyes closed and asleep with a top hat. She giggles.

Hux eyes her suspiciously.

“I don’t think anyone is coming,” Rey warns him, shaking her head.

“Ridiculous,” he tsks her, chin raising. His hand grabs the heavy handles. “The doorman or staff must come, it’s surely,” The large wood creaks open, echoing into the house. Sunlight pours into the entrance landing. “...locked.”

She laughs passed her husband as he sighs, closing and latching it behind them.

“Where is the damn staff?” He wonders, taking their coats himself.

“I don’t think anyone’s here.”

He huffs, pacing about the landing, looking about the Victorian decor for a coat-room or hanger before throwing them over the banister. He breathes funny and Rey stops admiring the insanely old house to trail her eyes up her husband’s turned back.

She can see outlines along his ribs and shoulders. They disappear into his belt, squeeze him beneath the black vest and white button down he wears. His mouth parts as he stretches. It's a subtle thing. But she recognizes the way he moves. Languid, like a cat trying to work a kink.

She shakes her head in confusion, giving a double-take, raised-brow expression at the back of his head. But she says nothing. He hadn’t mentioned it, and she’d leave him be until he did. Silly man.

“Where could he be?”

“Can't we look for him?”

“There’s damn well near twenty rooms in this stupid place.”

“Maybe shout for him? Mr. Skywal—!” She begins and he turns on her, sshh-ing and raising his hands. Rey laughs at the horror on his face.

He gives her a condescending look. “Don’t play with me, rabbit.” He warns, allowing his nerves and worry to show only for a second before he’s digging out his cellphone. “I’ll call him. Like a civilized person.”

Hux makes his call and Rey preoccupies herself with investigating a large standing clock beside them, with an unmoving pendulum, opening the glass to trace her hands on the inner machines that hide in it.

“It’s Hux. Where are you?”

Everything in this place must be a least be a hundred years old or more, but clocks are usually made up the same way as they've always been. She ducks, looking up at the discs and gears.

“Not your street address! We’ve already arrived, where are you in _this house?”_

Rey finds the rung that’s jostled from its anchor and yanks it back upward.

_“Where?”_

The gears spring, clicking, lead weights pushing past her fingers. She lets go and closes the glass once more. The minute hand snaps.

The pendulum moves.

“Hold on, wait, I’m coming there,” Hux pulls the phone from his ear. “Stay here a moment won’t you?”

She smiles at him with a nod and he kisses her cheek before he’s off the landing into the house, turning an immediate right. Disappearing.

Rey admires her fixed clock before twisting off the landing too.

She goes left.

* * *

“You do realize this entire area is the staff quarters,” Hux informs and has to try very, very dearly, not to sound too judgmental.

Ben barely looks up from the papers he’s reading, bent over the desk like a worried high schooler doing a test he didn’t study for.

“Mr. Solo.” He tries again, getting the odd sensation of being a grade-school teacher.

“What?”

Ben is no high schooler though. Despite the washed out hoodie and the uncombed hair, his face his every bit a man. With a strong set jaw, boxer’s nose and thick neck. Well. Maybe his eyes are what do it. Those puppy eyes that hold all the innocent confusion of a boy having broken something without meaning to.

“Your… living room. Your bedroom. That’s all servant quarters. This office of yours is where they're supposed to keep linens."

Ben shakes his head, going immediately back to the paperwork. “Oh. I… I don’t care about that.”

Hux wants to shake him.

Instead, he clenches his fingers. “You don’t. Well. Where is the staff supposed to sleep when you hire them?”

“I’m not hiring staff.”

Hux paces in front of the desk, expecting the answer but hating it all the same. “You cannot seriously mean to man this entire place alone. You do know the door was unlocked when we arrived. Unlocked! This place is monstrously enormous, did you even hear us when we waltzed right in like a couple of—”

“No, but you called.”

“But thieves do not call, do you see what I—” It’s getting harder to breathe.

Hux pauses, lids fluttering shut.  _Mmm._ His back stretches against the sensations pulling at his muscles. His shoulders roll and he turns back to Ben Solo, staring at those distant dark eyes and the way his body weighs on the desk. His voice comes out headier then he means it to. “You need company here, Ben.”

 _Woops._ Hux blinks fast and stands up straight.

“I don’t want anybody here.”

Hux gives up momentarily, trying to consider the adamant way the man clings to his isolation. He turns his eyes to the study, taking in the gaudy walls and frames and the dressers. His fingers run across the mantle above an empty fireplace and come back with a film of grey.

“Solo.” He says to his fingers. “Houses like these are made to be maintained weekly if not daily. They were made in an age where live-in servants and nannies were still prominent. When _‘wet nurse’_ was a more common title then… ' _Starbucks barista'_.”

“Is this supposed to stop them from calling me?” Ben asks, brows narrowing at the paper and then at him.

“You’re not actually reading the damn thing, will you just sign it? I can’t be here all day, I warned you.”

Ben signs, asking nothing more and Hux nods in relief, shaking off a slight tightness on his shoulders before continuing uninterrupted.

“If you aren’t going to hire a valet, a doorman, or a cleaning staff—”

Ben puts down the pen and stands from the desk, shaking his head and shoving his big hands into jean pockets. “I don’t need all that, I can do everything myself.”

“What are you to do if someone comes in here and tries to steal... everything! All these precious things you’ve wanted so badly, all these..” Hux turns, waving his hand at all the old furniture. “Skywalker… things.”

Ben almost laughs, but it’s a haunting, somber expression that disappears before it forms. It makes Hux’s gut sink low. Stupid boy. Stupid man.

“I’ll take care of anyone who tries to come in.”

It’s useless arguing against Ben’s strength. And at this point, it’s useless arguing against Ben at all.

So he doesn’t.

“Ben this isn’t just about… the house.” He tries, crossing the room to stand primly beside him. The man is a few inches taller than him, but Hux isn't bothered by it. He’s more bothered by the broadness of Ben’s shoulders. Of the intensity of his gaze as he stares out the window down to the empty courtyards. The curious contentment of... loneliness. “You can’t just live cooped up in here like Mrs. Havisham. Anakin did that and look where that got him.”

Ben glanced at him with a glare, but it was half-hearted and slightly timid.

“What if you have business partners over? How are you to host them?”

“I don’t want anything to do with the business.”

“Friends then!” Hux concedes. “What about your friends? When you invite them over.”

Ben shifts. His body. His mood. It all _shifts_ and suddenly the intensity of his eyes is lost to the floor. Hux glances down too and they both watch Ben scuffle his shoes.

“You are over.”

“What do you mean?” He asks and the realization of it comes to him like a slow wave. A roll of quiet emotion that tickles his feet like a shallow bit of sea foam.

“You are my friend.”

“We’re business associates.” Hux states. To both of them. Ben’s deep, dark eyes dart up at him from long, thick lashes. His lips jut out as he works his teeth into a clench. Hux notes all of this just as he begins to note how many years they have known each other.

He remembers their every phone call. And then all his visits to Ben’s old house. Their late night dinners discussing fathers and, the company of course, but also cars, money, television, and family and—

Damn.

Hux feels air leave him in an unfamiliar way. It's a little weightless to be standing there, on this beautiful Christmas morning, a hair away from Ben Solo in his cozy study, talking gently. About taking care of himself.

He swallows. Physically and figuratively. His hands yank down his vest and the restraints beneath it.

“Right. Well.” He shakes off the doubt, raises his chin. “As your friend, I’m putting an end to this. You’ll make a compromise whether you like it or not.”

His cell phone is in his hand and he tries to quickly find the appropriate contact, ignoring Ben as he suddenly draws closer, crowding Hux, eyes bright and curious, looming, like he’s trying to watch what he’s doing. A puppy dog.

Hux shudders.

He dials and waves Ben off. “Yes, this is Hux. Yes, we did, Dopheld, please, listen, get the house staff arranged to come to Mr. Solo’s house this weekend after the holiday. Yes.”

Ben is shifting hastily on his feet.

“On the account, yes, I’ll budget it later. No, just this once. Maybe monthly, I haven’t decided yet but not as a schedule refo--”

“Thanks, Hux.” Ben says quietly, dark night-sky filled eyes dancing beneath insecurity, gratitude leaking through someone trying not to appear grateful at all.

Hux very specifically doesn’t let himself smile, continuing his call. He just stares, unabashed. But then he remembers and pulls the phone away from his mouth briefly. “You’re welcome. Now take me back to my wife lest I get lost in this house on the way to the damn foyer.”

They walk as he talks, listening to his assistant bustle about, clearly not ready for this call.

As they pass windows in a hall that view the courtyard, Hux sighs, exasperated. “Dopheld, can you also get in contact with our west-end office landscaping? And call in the grocers while you're at it. Just in case.”

Ben glances at him but says nothing.

By the time they reach the front door he’s hung up, having given Dopheld enough to put the boy into a tizzy, with added laundry and plumbing services.

But there’s no Rey.

“Fantastic. Now I’ve lost my wife.”

Ben turns on the landing, stopping to consider his clock, which is ticking quote obnoxiously, the pendulum swinging to and fro. "This was broken."

"Damn it all."

“Can’t you call her?” Ben asks, turning away from the mechanical wonder.

“She doesn’t have a phone.” Not for his lack of pressing her to get one. Silly girl.

Hux leans out to look down one end and then another. “Rabbit?”

“Would she go upstairs?”

“She’d go anywhere she pleases.” Hux chuckles under his breath. “But do check, I’ll head back to the kitchen. She might’ve gotten impatient with me.”

* * *

It’s probably the most expensive place Rey had ever been.

It’s old. But the wealth hasn't left. It's only aged. She can feel it in her fingertips as she traces a hand down the hall. The texture of the finished wallpapers is slightly raised; embossed with little golden crests that lead to wood paneling.

Despite being aged, dusty, and smelling a little of dank wood, it’s still bright. Windows in hallways larger than her entire height let in the sun past gathered velvet curtains each one pushed aside with thick coiling cord.

It’s as if every piece imaginable to make up this house is made to be ridiculously ornate. Expensive.

Gruesome. Hux had said. She laughed at the memory. The sound echoes like she’s in a cave instead of a house. So large. So empty.

Their own house, which she always considered lavish, is nothing in comparison. A poor person’s idea of what being rich was. Black appliances and marble countertops with funny modern looking chairs.

This though. This was… real money.

Well, maybe not that.

Rey’s head cocks as she passes a corner of the hall where a cheap, modern looking nightstand holds an internet router. The wires are haphazard, and the getup looks sorely out of place.

She follows the black cables into another hall as they criss-cross through frames of paintings and portraits—

Portraits…

Of... women.

And suddenly Rey is trying to take a step back and also walk at the same time, staring aghast, as her other shoulder grazes the hallway's length.

They’re all of women. Women just… staring. Sitting. In clothes and— no.

The same woman.

“Weird.”

She can’t help the word. Doesn’t even think about the comment as she says it.

Because it is weird. There are hundreds of them. The hallways continued going and going with them and glancing backward Rey realized they had been behind her too, all along the house as she’d explored it. She just hadn’t noticed right away, so attached to the decor as they were.

The woman is regal, at least. She's adorned with jewelry and layers and layers of dresses, sometimes with crazy looking hair and odd medieval type posing.

Must be some lady.

As she circles around, she notices the house broken up here and there, interrupted by a random dresser or a solitary cardboard box. As if still in the middle of rearranging. Of re-furnishing maybe.

Most of the doors to all the rooms are open too. A trait that just reinforces the effect of how… empty it all was. An entire house open and empty aside from a million pictures of one woman.

“Weird.” She says again, but quieter this time, as she makes her way upstairs.

There must be three levels, with how tall the whole thing is, but she doesn’t find the other staircase so she does more exploring instead. She stops only to turn lights on and off or peer out windows, trying to orientate her sense of direction by looking for her and Hux’s little car. Just trying to understand the logic of wanting or needing a house this large.

She peers into rooms too, looking for a person, or just seeing how many ways a room could look different. As if that would explain the point of having so many. She finds it’s actually quite a bit, depending on the sheet set. But little else. Most of the rooms are quite bare aside from their beds. Stripped, almost. Naked.

One room she opens hits her senses like a ton of bricks.

Maybe it’s the dust. Or the thick smell of dust and wood and fragrance. Like opening a box of dead roses. Or maybe it’s the literal sun shining directly into her eyes, burning her retinas as it glares into the windows. A natural security guard.

It's probably both.

It’s only when she raises her hand to shield her view that she sees what the room is.

Beautiful.

It’s by far the most furnished, gleaming in crystals and gilded wood and polished glass. It’s stunning. And old. Like a museum that’s become a museum itself. An abandoned art gallery.

A four-poster bed swallows most of the floor space, with a sheer canopy and hundreds on very unnecessary throw pillows. Hux would have a fit about it. But there are wardrobes too. Mirrors. Dresses, or, mannequins with dresses on them. A whole row of them complete with the petticoats and silver cages to hold their respective headwear and jewelry.

Definitely a museum.

She lifts the sleeve of one and it dances. The fabric is lighter than air. Silky. Soft like a cloud. When it drops, it twirls like a feather.

Rey watches it until it stops and then looks at all the dresses at the same time.

Why did she get the feeling none of them had ever been worn?

She shakes her head again. "Really weird."

She follows that train of thought to the immaculate vanity. The sun reflects off this thing like daggers. It's all slices of white carving out silver like water through ice, but warm to the touch when she puts her hands on it, the sun having toasted the surface all morning.

There's delicate baubles and perfumes sitting there. Small closed pots of old-fashioned makeup and a jar of brushes that have collected nothing but dust. A layer of powder on them that's really only dust. The makeup of time.

Rey picks up a brush and marvels that it’s made of metal or stone.

“Hey.”

She jumps nearly out of her skin, clutching the brush to her chest and whirling to the door to spot another person. A real human being.

“Gah—god!” And suddenly Rey's laughing, before straightening. “You frightened me.”

It’s a boy. Man. A man in casual clothes. He’s quite tall.

He staring at her.

“Sorry. It’s so quiet. I didn’t think anyone was here.”

Rey puts the brush back down, delicately, keeping her eyes on the stranger as she straightens. _Always in trouble_ , Hux had constantly reprimanded her. She tries to smile at him again, but he just… stares. Caught dead at the entrance like a statue. The effect would work better if he wasn’t wearing jeans and sneakers.

“I’m here with my husband.” She tried, leaning as if to peek past his broad shoulders to see out the hall. “He has an appointment with Mr. Skywalker.”

The man’s eyes are… seriously staring. Wow. In a way that starts to make Rey uncomfortable, if she’s honest. And normally things like that don’t phase her.

But then he’s alive. Almost like pressing play on a paused movie. His face jerk and twists and emotion makes him seem suddenly, too real, realization pouring out with his upward brows and his open mouth.

His broad shoulders hunch and his hands stutter in the air.

“Oh—you— you're... Yes. Right. H—Hux.”

“Rey. My husband's—”

“Skywalker.”

“No— he’s—”

“I mean me. Meant—I’m. I’m Mr. Sol—Skywalker. I’m Mr. Skywalker.”

His arm shoots up for a handshake. Stiff. Statue still again. Jesus the staring, really—

 _Wait—_  
  
Then it’s her whose reeling.

Rey takes a step forward and the man seems to instinctively move backward. Like he’s frightened of her. But Rey’s faster and more excited, grasping his hand. “You’re Mr. Skywalker!?”

This could not be him.

He was so young! And… soft looking. But Dark. Broad. Deep-set eyes, a pouting, ridiculously wide mouth, and wavy hair that made him look altogether... common and yet so unique. Weird. He looked weird. But good-weird.

He was also _not_ a crippling, grouchy old man with a cane and a hump like she had been imagining all this time.

Which meant...

All of Hux’s complaining. His incessant worrying. The nervousness the anxiety. The put-upon impressing, the hen-like paranoia at visiting. The phone banter.

She had thought all that a simple thing in the face of an old, father figure. A Mentor. Teacher and ungrateful student.

But in the face of _this._ A handsome, young, younger than Hux, quiet, somber-looking bachelor.

_Oh._

Well.

Rey’s smile knows no limit, teeth showing and eyes wild.

Their hands hang in the air and his other suddenly closed around their palms. “Ye-yeah. Yes. I’m—I’m Ben Solo.”

“So you are.” She can’t help her giggling. His face, stern and intense, holds his gaze even as his skin burns a bright, pastel pink.

Crazy.

"You okay, Mr. Solo?"

“Yes! What?—Sorry you—You look, looked. You looked like—someone.” He trailed. “But.. you’re Hux…”

“Rey.” She corrects again and helps his obvious lack of social skills. Something she's used to with all of Hux's business circle. “You have a beautiful home.” She says and means it, still holding his hand as she leans back to let her eyes trail around the room. “I love this room!”

“Y-you…do? You do. Yeah?—Yeah—"

“Rabbit? Is that you?”

And then Rey is grinning, dropping her new acquaintance's hands unceremoniously and rounding the doors of the room to the hall.

***

“Huxley?”

“There you are, pet.” He cooes, meeting her warmed hands and kissing her cheek. “You just had to wander didn’t you?”

She’s laughing and he indulges in just listening to the sound, ignoring Ben Solo for just a moment to be pleased with the simple sounds his wife makes in his company. Because of his company. He’s grinning when he finally looks at the man, introducing them.

“Mr. Solo, this is my wife, Rey.”

“We just met!” Rey corrects but goes for a second handshake anyway.

Ben falters.

_Odd._

Hux watches the man’s hand hesitate, limply, before grasping his wife’s fingers and letting them go. A pathetic action.

_Odd, odd._

An unsettling feeling trickles through his demeanor and he frowns. It wasn’t exactly the meeting he had been expecting. Or one he’d hoped for. He’d hoped Ben would like Rey.

Rey being the most important person in his life and by far the most interesting and Ben being... Well... Ben being… his—Friend.

He tosses the word out of his mind immediately, not yet wanting to explore the usage of it and feeling cold saying it after the awkward introduction.

They stand in the hall, quietly. Silent.

The clock downstairs clacks loudly and Hux wants to scream.

“I was just saying, I love the house.” Rey continues, ever the unconcerned.

“Yes?” He encourages her, desperate for her unending casualness and side-eyeing Ben Solo’s rude disinterested—

_Oh._

But Ben Solo isn’t disinterested.

He’s standing stock straight, jaw tight. A soldier uneased. A subtle shake of his skin that is nothing but hard focus. Staring.

“I can’t believe so much of it is still intact. It must be so old! The curtains and the wallpaper I mean,”

Staring at Rey.

Staring at his wife.

Almost. There’s a flicker in those black eyes and at first, Hux thinks Ben might actually be roving his eyes over his wife’s entire _body_.

But he’s not. He’s looking at her and looking at… the wall. The—paintings.

Hux follows the gaze.

Paintings. He’d noticed the house had been covered in paintings. The study had been as well.

He just hadn't noticed what the paintings were of.

_Oh dear god._

“Your wife must love it.”

The comment has both he and Ben snapping back to Rey’s attention.

“What?”

“What?”

They both ask. Rey glances between the two of them before settling her gaze on Ben. “Your wife?”

“I don’t have a wife.” He answers simply, shortly, with a wrinkled confusion on his face and a twisted frown.

Rey’s little finger points, straight up, delicate and precise. “The woman?”

“Oh—god—No, that’s I— it’s—”

“That’s not his wife, rabbit that’s—”

“—my grandmother,”

“—the Queen, Padme.”

Rey shakes her head, blinking. Unphased. As if it were a perfectly good conclusion when it really, really wasn't. “Oh.”

Ben is struggling to be coherent. Hux can tell. And frankly, he’d never seen the man like this. Ever. And at the red flourishing at the man’s neck and the way he wouldn’t stop looking at Rey, lips parted, pink, and eyes lidded, Hux suspected Ben had never felt this way either.

Hux glanced up at one of the portraits and sighed.

_No wonder._

Well, well…

“Well.” Hux chuckles. It makes them both turn to him. “We should go rabbit, we mustn’t be late now.”

He offers her the crook of his arm and she comes with the familiarity she always does.

“We don’t want to take up too much of Mr. Solo’s time anyway.”

They lead the way out, and it's only the heavy, balanced thudding that he knows Ben is following closely behind them.

At the door, he pats his wife’s hand as he consoles Ben.

“The first batch of them will arrive by Saturday morning. They won’t be in your way and they won’t be long. Just let them do their job.”

Ben nods at Rey.

Hux continues. “It will be really simple and honestly—you need someone here.”

Rey is staring at Ben too, eyes far away.

Hazey.

It's an expression he recognizes. One she gets when she's looking at a mess of wires. Or a broken set of motherboards.

“Do you have plans for today, then?" He asks the man.

Ben motions vaguely to the house behind him.

Rey glances at him with an unhappy expression. But Hux isn't about to do anything about it.

"Right. Well, let's leave him to it."

They turn.

“Happy Christmas Mr. Skywalker.” His wife's voice chimes. Clear and sweet.

“Ben.” He corrects at her. Hux's eyes narrow, but his lips curl.

“Happy Christmas Ben.” She repeats, better this time. Cheeky.

It takes them only a few steps before Ben has followed them out, swallowing, hurrying, and then,

“Wait, Hux.” He calls. Predictable!

They stop and Hux waits, the sunlight of Christmas morning making Ben’s eyes look golden-honey brown and tearful.

They stare at Rey even as his mouth talks to him.

“Will you come back? Saturday. So… it all goes…” He finally, finally looks at him and the unspoken worry there is enough to make the tightness in Hux's back quite unbearable.

"Of course. I can be here if you like.” It's a soft agreement. Gentle.

“Great.”

“See you then.”

“Yeah.”

The leave more or less quietly. The car pulls out and Rey presses her head to the window.

Hux watches the image of Ben Solo in their rearview mirror, who follows their car as they pull out, following to the edge of the roundabout. His broad height gets smaller and smaller and soon he has to look at Rey’s side mirror to see him.

They both watch Ben disappear as he simply stands there and watches them go.

It isn’t until ten minutes of quiet driving back toward the city that he says anything.

“Well, rabbit.” He addresses. Her head rolls on the chair to look at him. She gives him a demure smile of acknowledgment that he recognizes from the paintings in that dreary place. “What do you think of Ben Solo?”

She thinks for a while, looking back at the side mirror where the man last was.

“He’s very sad.”

_Hmm._

Hux raises his hand to hers, both of them entwining their fingers as he considers her vague and insightful words.

"The richest man in the world, sad, you say."

"Yes."


	3. "Huxley"

_Two years prior_

He didn’t _meet_ his wife.

“I have the Spelt Risotto, a Berkshire Pork tenderloin, and a glass of Opus One.”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“Alright, I’ll be back in a min—”  
  
“No,you’ve forgotten—!”  
  
“Oh, I never do. The Ahi Salad, Sashimi, on the side, with a glass of sparkling water and a slice of carrot cake.”

He nodded. She winked. “I never forget Mr. Hux.”

“Well!”

He didn’t _meet_ his wife, just as you do not _meet_ your dry cleaner. Or your valet. Or your concierge.

~~Or your waitress.~~

Krueth Blue was critically reviewed and highly recommended. It was quiet. Secluded. Clean. And only a mile away from the office. He had sent his assistant to it twice for a personal review, before setting up a permanent table for him every Thursday evening at 6:00 p.m. Purely for business soiree’s, of course, where he needed to impress incoming or outgoing clients.

But Thursdays evenings only. Once he had once scheduled to be in on a Tuesday lunch and it had been an absolute categorical disaster. Not on the part of the restaurant, no, that distinction should be made. The staff at Krueth Blue were fantastic. Friendly but not nosy, efficient and calm, and the food was always perfect.

He was just, admittedly, a particular person with a particular comfort in routine.

And _Rey_ did not work Tuesdays.

“A regular then!” His client chortled. He’d been a regular for a year now. “I didn’t even see the Sashimi on the menu,” They didn’t list it anymore. “Nor did I peg you for a sweets man.”

“It is what they recommend.” He answered, leaning back to look distractedly away from the kitchen.

It is what ~~they~~ she had recommended. A year ago on his first visit. He had requested the Sashimi because it was a cleanly dish and his button-down had been white that day, but he had asked her recommendation because of curiosity and politeness.

“Well, I could literally eat our carrot cake for every meal of my life.” She had smiled.

He’d requested it.

And it had been the same order since.

It had been an uncomplicated thing at the time. Not the order, although it was, but their relationship. Customer and server respectively. 

But again there had been a comfort in routine. There had been something reliable about handling the check, whilst saying goodbye to the business acquaintance of the week, and taking time alone at his table to write follow-up memos and forms with a slice of carrot cake at his side.

“That one was talk-y.” She hummed.

“Mmm.” He actually hummed. Not looking at her as he ate and she took the folio for his payment.

“Would you like your headache Rosé?” It was a hypothetical. She was always, already, preemptively, pouring the bottle into the glass when he inevitably nodded and took it from her.

“On the house.” She teased. It was his bottle. He’d tip her bigger those nights. When the company was bad but she was good. A bittersweetness that never reflected in the always decadent carrot cake.

Then she would leave him, his future-Rabbit, and he would dread but look forward to his next Thursday, a new client at his hip, and the same waitress at his front.

Uncomplicated comfort.

Comfort had been everything to him them.

And yet he’d been always so god, damn, uncomfortable.

His father’s death hadn’t started it. But it had been the catalyst.

Until Brendol Hux had thankfully, finally, passed _the fuck_ away, taking Hux LLP away from the old grubby man’s hands had been his entire life. Inheritance always in question, every waking moment had been spent completely devoted to the annoying, blindsided fool.

He had simultaneously emulated the man to the point of self-erasure to ensure his father’s trust, and loathed every detail of ~~the company~~ his life as it was run by him.

It was much like a rebellious teen in a strict household, free for the first time in years and drowning head-first into drugs and alcohol.

Except he had been 30, finally CEO, free from pretending to be his father, and it had been a dive into sex fetishes and bondage.

…he should clarify.

He’d had ~~relationships~~ arrangements previously. Fake ones maybe, but ~~relationships~~ arrangements all the same. And he’d had sex too. Just not… the sex he fantasized about.

The first few months the company had been his, he had been distracted enough. But when things fell into place, when work became the satisfying clicking of puzzle pieces snapping together into a secure, reliable, system....

He got bored.

That was really the only best word for it, though, it was probably more like he had always been bored with the sexual aspect of his life and now he finally had time to realize that.

The first foray had been innocent, accidental.

He had only needed a pair of sock garters.

Fed up with the constant every day sinking sensation of a too-soft silk along his calves; he had near slammed a wine bottle down beside his laptop and drawn up the item quickly, searching and selecting vigorously until coming across a helpful yet doomed _“Others interested in this item were also interested in,”_

And, well, didn’t others have interesting related thoughts when it came to _sock garters._

Thigh garters, body garters, harnesses, harnesses with cuffs, handcuffs, a body harness with hand cufflinks and collar, harness sets with collar and leash, — really, it was a logical follow-through of terms. A batch of digital meta data that summed up a secret interest he didn't know he had. He just hadn’t expected to follow the breadcrumb trail in a way that it all ended up in his digital shopping cart.

He hadn’t thought about it after that until the delicate cardboard boxes arrived at his door and then he was faced with throwing away the ~~shameful~~ sexual things and feeling silly, or sitting down with them at his computer once more and researching the process of them like one would a recently bought power tool.

He did the latter.

And it didn’t go beyond that.

Well. The level of interaction with the items he bought didn’t, aside from the sock garters, which he used _as intended_. But he didn’t try any of it on. He watched the videos, looked up the guides, read the reviewed experiences, admired the make of them… and then put them neatly away into a drawer.

And that became the routine.

Search, buy, research, store.

He couldn’t very well _partake_. That was impossible. Because of his scheduling, his reputation, or his insecurities, pick one, really.

But the routine was enough to satisfy the need. The urge. The fantasy. That maybe… he could. Or. He would be ready when… the time emerged?

It was stupid.

The harnesses were the start. He collected quite a few sets of them until the eventually became his favorite things, still are in fact. But from harnesses, it evolved to leashes. Crops. Flays. Oh. There was a beautiful, mahogany, red stained-leather flay that had been his prized item for a month. He’d take it out and dust it around his furniture, just to admire the movement of it. It felt wonderful.

Then it went to ropes.

The ropes were enjoyable because there was a lot to a rope in the ways of knots. He would spend every evening watching videos and practicing techniques. He’d tie up his pillows with Boola Boola knots, Lark’s head knots, or spend the evening cursing and tsking when he’d gotten it wrong and would need to pull out pliers to undo them.

Ropes led to ribbons, to suspension, which led to the trade show Exhibitions.

See, because, suspension ribbons could only be properly admired live. Videos were fine, but there was an art form to it. A beauty. There was an elegance to the human form wrapped like something caught in a spidery web of satin and bent back. A gymnastic appreciation.

And after a week of trying to distract himself with ordering dildos or plugs, he admitted to himself that he needed to see more of this, of all of this, in person, somehow.

And sex exhibitions actually happened more frequently than he imagined.

He’d booked a fake appointment with a shrink, hilarious in retrospect, and taken an unpaid vacation for the weekend for a local show.

With the tallest-collared trench coat he could find, and a fake name, he had dove into a convention space full of dominants and subordinates, bondage participants and pornstars, customers and vendors, and became a bit of a ~~lurker~~   voyeur _._

Initially, he signed up for a few workshops the first day but found during them that he actually knew quite a bit more than the beginners then they had been made for, because, why, had it already been six months he’d been doing this? He canceled the rest and changed his scheduling to a vendor’s. As if Hux LLC was a sex club rather than a law firm. Artists and exhibitors led him through their booths the rest of the weekend, showing off new items or ‘installations’ of things to feature in his fake-not-real-actually-a-lie bondage club.

He said nothing, sweating the entire time. But his heart rate was faster than he had ever felt and he didn't feel panicked but thrilled. Happy. Excited about this more than he had ever been anything else. The company had been his passion, and he enjoyed his work, he did, but this was... personal. Fun. Something of his harnessed from his own wants of himself rather than a motivation of his culminated by the hatred of his father. 

It was nice. Wonderful. Best weekend of his life ~~at the time.~~

He made orders, admired new techniques, and finally saw a suspension show.

He’d never forget turning a tacky red velvet corner to see a woman dangling, supine but curled, feet up like a ballet dancer, and blindfolded, from the ceiling. An exquisite picture of serenity and tension, at the edge but content—It was stunning! Sublime! Everything he’d hoped to see in one. Harness and cuffs, ribbons and collar and oh, what he wouldn't give to understand that feeling. To hang there, like a displayed flower but waiting, with anticipation—to tie something up like that would be fantastic but _to be tied_ up like that, with a smile—

And that’s when his relationship with his waitress, _his waitress,_ got complicated.


	4. Company

He wouldn’t have realized it was New Year's Eve had he not been counting the days until Saturday.

He’d been so entrenched in cement, in spackling paste, in wood glue, in isolation, that weekdays had become nothing but a blurred, unimportant marker, another forgotten tool, set aside to make room for restoring the house.

That could have also been because he no longer had to work. There was no more drill days, no service training, no classes, no court dates, no 9 to 5, nothing.

Just him and this fucking house.

And he wouldn’t have realized just how empty it was either, had the Huxs’ company not graced it just a week ago.

He wouldn’t say that he was exactly looking forward to their return (he was), nor was he looking forward to the presence of a bunch of service industry strangers (he really wasn’t), but it was something to wait for. To anticipate.

And fuck he waited.

He meant to ignore it. To pretend they’d never come. But how could he, when every one of Hux’s logical, rational, words hounded him at every turn? The labor work became more grueling and ridiculous when you had a subconscious ginger-haired lawyer following your every step telling you just how pointless it was. The imagined sharpness of that familiar voice was just as sharp as the wood splintering into his fingers as he cut new tables and stripped the porch.

And Mrs. Hux had—

Fuck. It was hard to even—

He didn’t go upstairs anymore, hadn’t since, if that was any clue to the impression she had left.

It was worse than that even. Because, of course, _the fucking paintings_ — As if they weren't already the bane of his daily routine, with pretty pouting faces of a woman he could never (and should never) have, now they reminded him of a very real, very alive woman he could never, should never have (but maybe, no, fuck,).

That's the thing, he told himself, she was “Mrs. Hux.” Not just married but married to _him_. Hux. Armitage.

Armitage Hux. The man he owed everything to. His entire life, his success, his gratitude, his affection. His closest and only friend.

Which made Hux’s voice in his head even worse that week.

There was something fucked up about painting baseboards and getting distracted by a portrait of your grandmother with heavy-lidded bedroom eyes that reminded you of woman you had only met for a few minutes, and then hearing her husband’s voice whisper gently, _“You shouldn’t be here all alone, Ben."_

He’d punched a hole in the wall after the words came, unbidden and unwelcome to his mind, and then spent the rest of the night filling it (and his brain) with plaster and putty.

It was a bad idea, them coming back to the house.

Ben called Hux twice that week to tell him not to.

But each time, whether he was in his empty room, or out on the lawn (anywhere away from her eyes) and the ringing ended to that perfectly groomed, perfectly toned, “Yes, Solo?”

He balked.

_“Don’t come.” “You have to cancel everything.” “I can’t fucking think anymore.” “Hux, please,” “Is your wife there?” “Can I talk to your wife?” “Is your wife coming too?” “Hux, please, don’t come.”_

“Are you still coming Saturday?”

“Of course I am, stop calling me.”

“Okay.”

And so now, he stood, staring at the dirt pathway from his front door, sweating with nerves in the chilly wind of New Year's Eve.

Ben was so tense at this point he thought he was going to have a heart attack when the sleek silver car finally turned into the lane, obscured slightly by the masses of trees. Hux’s car.

“Shit.”

He considered retreating. Slamming the door shut and locking it. Ignoring them like he wasn’t home until they just left.

But instead, he stood shock still, watching the car drive up the gravel on the roundabout, raising a hand awkwardly at the dark windows, like some sort of happy-go-lucky neighbor hailing guests down for a picnic. He shoved his fists into his pockets.

The car parked, driver door clicking, gravel crunching under a brown loafer, and red hair catching the sunlight like the spark of a match.

Okay. Good. Hux. Great. _Just Hux._

The passenger door unlatched and the door swung open to a pair of smooth peach-tanned legs.

Nope. Mrs. Hux too.

“Oh, fuck me, okay.”

He took the stairs down from the door towards their car.

“Hey!” He tried, _tried_ , being jovial. Being normal.

“Hello, Mr. Skywalker!” Mrs. Hux called, her eyes shielded by honey truffle sunglasses and lips a shade of pink akin only to the color one got from sucking on pomegranate seeds.

“It’s Ben.”

“Call him Mr. Solo,” Hux advised, rounding the corner, his own sunglasses a pair to hers.

“Hello, Ben.”

In fact, they looked like a set, like two porcelain painted salt and pepper shakers.

His lawyer looked lighter, brighter, then he’d ever seen him, with khaki slacks that bared his naked ankles and a breezy white button down with rolled sleeves and a neck so open he could see the redness in the complexion past his collarbone. A nautical blue stripe lined the collar, like a faux choker. It matched the pinstripe blue and white of her.

 _Her._ Rey. That was it. Rey Hux. Her hair was down aside from a sloppy bun and her shoulders and legs and skin, fuck, so much skin. More skin than anything the damn portraits had ever teased.

_Different person, different person, different person—_

It was a jumpsuit, but shorts, or, a tank sewn to shorts or… whatever (he was never good at fashion.) A set. His and Her’s Sunday best.

He swallowed thickly, struggled to find something to say.

“Why do you look like you own a yacht?” He asked.

Hux took his glasses off, sneering. “Because I do. Why do you look like you _don’t_ own this house?”

The white of those irises flashed before passing him as Hux made his way into the manor, and he turned to defend his paint-splattered jeans, sneakers, and t-shirt, but nearly had a seizure when he realized she was _there_ , standing under his nose.

Fuck she was tiny.

“Have you been doing the porch then?”  She was pointing behind him. Her fingers were small and naked with little specks of paint like make-up (freckles). Perfect imperfections.

He didn’t turn to look at the ripped up wood and bags of stone, staring at her skin instead.

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t you do the railing first, though?”

“I… “

Fuck. Oh, this was such a bad idea. What the hell was she even doing here? But thank god, thank god she came, he needed to see her again. See if she was real. But no, she shouldn’t have been here, there was no reason she had to come.

“H-Hey, Hux—” He said, turning from her questioning and following his lawyer instead.

Hux was already past the foyer, heading into the kitchens, where he’d made up a living area.

“Hux—”

“I can’t seriously believe you have this entire thing to yourself and you decided to hole up in this tiny little corner. There are twenty rooms Solo, including the Master— where’s the Master bedroom?”

“Upstairs.”

It was a bit unreal, Hux chiding him like he had been all week, but in real-time. It was like walking onto the set of a TV-show he’d only been watching just yesterday. As if Hux was some movie star, and Ben was the foolish security guard; having to keep up with the shorter, more expensively dressed man, bending low to answer while trying to minimize his bigness.

He tried not to think of the princess behind them, trailing along.

“Rabbit did you see all this? He’s set up where the maids are supposed to.”

They came upon his living room, Hux cocking hips and placing his hands on his waist.

Wow, had Hux always been so long? So little? Maybe the suits had hidden it. He looked so fucking casual—

“Oh, this is nice!”

Ben twisted, eyes darting, backing up in near fear as Rey Hux entered in after them, immediately plopping onto his couch. His couch, damn, there she was—

“Don’t encourage him,” Hux says, and Ben glances at him from over his shoulder, shuffling, feeling more crowded in this enormous house then he ever has before, with the two them at either side, like bookends to keep him from falling over.

It’s hard to keep up. Like _they’re_ the fucking owners of this house, not him.

Rey leans onto her elbows, her neck elongates in a cocked puzzlement. Behind her, Padme does the same sixty years ago, frozen in paint. Mirrored.

“Encourage what?” She asks.

Ben’s hand rushes to yank at his hair and he cringes away from the sight of her. _And her._ Them.

“When are they getting here?” He asks Hux, asks the floor, actually, but Hux hears him and hovers. A delicate hand touches his shoulder.

“Any moment actually, not to worry, we won’t be here long enough to bother you, Ben.”

Ben. _Ben._ Hux almost never called him that, but it always sounded so nice when he did.

“Okay.” He nods, looking at his friend and wanting to grasp at his shoulders. To hold steady.

Hux smiles, and it’s an odd, calculated thing, it always is.

“I’ll meet them out front then, you can stay here with Rey and keep company until they’re set.”

 _Oh, god_ —

“Hux—”

“Is that alright, rabbit? Keep Mr. Solo company?”

Rey slides up to her feet and comes to kiss the man on his cheek. “Yes, Huxley.”

Ben watches them with a heavy, worried brow, nervous but fascinated. He’s never seen Hux affectionate. Not like this. Not gentle. Not casual. Not… domesticated.

There’s a look in his eyes he can’t quite see, turned away as he is like this.

But he sees the expression reflected in Rey, and his jaw tightens, looking at it, the raw and open feeling.

It looks more like the candid smiling photographs of his grandmother, rather than the portraits. The real-life images of her caught, staring, at his grandfather.

“Good. Keep yourselves preoccupied, I’ll sort out the help.”

Hux is gone with a few sharp clacks of his shoes.

And he was alone.

“Do you have anything to drink?”

Fuck. No. He wasn’t.

“Uh, yeah. I—” He turns away from her because, god, yes, anything to not look at the woman, “I do.”

The kitchen is somehow worse because the countertops narrow the walkway to the fridge. And she’s at his elbow now, because of it, and he does everything not to look at her as he opens the fridge and she peers beneath his arm, her hair tickling his skin.  

“I have water, pop, beer—”

“What’s this? Oooh,”

“It’s a protein drink for...” Oh.. wow. God. _Fuck._

He’d looked down at her as she leaned forward into his fridge, and fuck, it wasn’t his fault that she was so tiny, so short, and it wasn’t his fault that the breezy little dress she was wearing was so loose, so it wasn’t his god damn fault that he could see down the slope of her neck to the curves of her breasts. “gain-gain—gaining— “ They were as tan as the rest of her, like she took to laying out in the sun, naked, or something, and he could see the small dark edge of nipple peeking out from the cotton that it grazed and _jesus christ_. “Jesus Christ.”

“For gaining Jesus Christ?” She snickered, sliding the drink back and pulling out something else. “Oh, lemonade!”

He tore his eyes away, leaning half his body against the fridge where the thick flesh of his cock bumped against the door it now hid behnd. He hoped the cold metal would calm him down.

She was moving away from him thankfully, though his eyes darted to the back of her thighs as she did. She was showing too much skin.

“Have you been working on anything inside the house?”

“What?”

“You know like...,” She started, not looking at him as she lifted the top of the old-fashioned pitcher, “Oh do you have a glass?”

He was able to get her one without showing her his erection by relying on the reach of his long arms.

“Thanks.”

“Uh huh.”

“And you know, like have you done other things besides the porch? Need anything done inside?”

“I… uh,” He closed the fridge and pushed his back up against it, sneakers squeaking as he tried to let the metal swallow him up, hands covering his crotch. “I... was putting in speakers… there, I had a sound system in my old apartment and thought I could put them up.”

“Oh cool!” She perked immediately, a smile so bright and so much like Padme’s (and his mom’s slightly, fuck) that he had to look away from it, staring at her hands instead. Her nails were baby blue with short, clean, white tips. “To play music through the house?”

He nodded and when he felt her gaze start to burn through him he pointed to the small kitchen table by his bedroom, where boxes sat opened with wires spilling out. “I... I had bought more since there’s just so many rooms.”

“Wow look at that!”

And she was gone, distracted, Ben slumped, hands falling away, cock relaxing, headache forming, heart still pounding, as he watched her sift through his speakers.

But it was only a relief in distance. Already he knew this could only get worse as he watched her bare shoulder flexing and moving, reminding him of a specific portrait of his grandmother in the smoking room where her own shoulder rolled backward, sexual and free from a black sequined gown.

Could he get any more fucking sick and perverted?

“I should check on Hux.” He said, much louder then he had intended.

“What?” She asked after him, but Ben didn’t turn or stop, leaving her there and retreating, hiding, running away, with loud, thumping stomps.

He found the lawyer outside, with a group of strangers who’d just unloaded crates and boxes from a new set of cars in the front lot.  Standing there, shoulders set in white and hand outstretched to a point, issuing instructions, Hux looked like some sort of prince. Some legacy holding modern man you could read about in tabloids that favored overseas gossip. Or maybe some celebrity. He really was like a movie star.

“At the west end. There’s a lake house for wine keeping, you can take the remnants down there for now.”

There was a lake house?

“Hux.”

He turned only briefly, saying nothing to him before called back again by the men already heading to their truck.

“Sir, do you want these stones set at the front?”

“Take care of the trees first and then we’ll see.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hux,” Ben tried again, looming over the lean, shorter, man. He dipped low to the side of his ear. A scent of something clean, like soap, or hair product, caught his nose. “Hux, can I talk to you?”

Hux’s spine straightened before he waved him off with a lazy wrist. “If you aren’t going to help just wait a moment Ben. Mrs. Packer, can I send you off now that you’ve arrived?”

“Shall I get the same as the lists I get for you, Mr. Hux?” The woman asked, her arm laden with collapsed eco-friendly grocery bags.

“To start with, yes, add a bit of protein to the usual too, won’t you? And a few prepped items, if they have any ready.”

“Chickens?”

“Preferably yes, with hot plates, no need for cooking tonight.” The small group watched, seemingly enraptured with Hux’s control of each question. Including Ben. he listened as Hux went from ordering groceries for the house to informing the next team which rooms to start with for ‘ _turning-fresh,’_ as he called it. He told them where the laundry rooms were, what sheets he wanted clean, and which to throw out. Then he had a plumber at his side, and Ben trailed behind them as Hux talked irrigation and installing a water filtration system.

Ben didn’t ever remember telling Hux about what he liked to eat, let alone what the house needed in order to be functional, but the man seemed, as always, to be leagues ahead of him.

When the servicing crowd dwindled to none, Hux finally turned to him, looking content and expectant.

“Thanks.” Ben managed.

“Of course, it’s why I came.”

It was, he reminded himself. And his stomach turned a little sour. Heavy. His shoulders squeezed together as he rubbed a hand over his arm, looking away a bit bashfully. “Yeah… well, Thanks. For doing it. For me. Not just for… I know you don’t need to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hux asked, stepping closer and knitting a judgmental expression onto his face.

“I mean, you already have the company.”

“You mean my wife?”

“What? No. I mean Skywalker. The account. My company.”

“Oh.” Hux was the bashful one now, lips pursing and eyes blinking fast, looking everywhere else. “Yes, well, we can’t have you living like a squatter. It would look bad to potential shareholders.”

“And… and you do.”

“What?”

“You do have company. So... I know you don’t have to waste time with me.” Ben swallowed the words. He never liked getting honest like this. He liked it better when Hux was so mean, they did nothing but snap and argue. They understood each other better when they were telling each other to shut up. And speaking to Hux on the phone or across from a desk was so much easier than _this_. Than talking to each other barely a handsbreadth away, close enough to touch. (To kiss.)

Fuck, what? Where _the fuck_ had that come from?

“Yes, well, we’ll see if it’s a waste yet.” And Hux chuckled. It was a light sound. Like a low cat’s purr that was just soft enough you’d think you’d imagined it.

Ben stared at him.

He’d always known Armitage was a handsome man when they had first met, years and years ago. But again, this was a different type of Hux. A different flavor. This Hux wasn’t the biting, ruthless, mouth-full-of-legal-terms and eyes full of spite Hux he’d come to know.

This Hux was at ease, with colorless eyes reflecting the sky and the wind catching fox hairs that were normally so glued down to his skull they were practically just grooves in a marble statue.

Now they danced, comically, about his head, groomed but happy.

This Hux was beautiful. That was it. That was the difference. Handsome and beautiful. Both true but both so slightly but so importantly different.

Shit, he really thought so didn’t he? He thought Armitage Hux was drop dead gorgeous.

Fuck, this was turning into a living _nightmare._

“You two should leave soon.”

Hux’s expression immediately turned disgusted, blown out lips frowning with the curve of his upset brows.

Oops.

“Don’t worry, Solo, we shall. Wouldn’t want to give your goals to be completely alone this year a bad start.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Once the grocer is back and I’m certain you have enough not to die, we’ll be off.”

“Hux—”

“Why are you out here? I don’t need your help, go and help my wife like a good host.”

Hux turned his back on him, walking out past the lawns towards the landscapers as they tackled the first row of trees leading out to the gates. Ben watched the man’s lithe, slim frame cut patches out of the sunlight as he strode away and sighed. Fuck.

No excuses now.

Mrs. Hux was in his ceiling when he got back.

“Hey! H-hey—”

Her long tan legs were dangling out of his vent like some sort of sexual chandelier. His hands danced around them, wanting to stabilize her no-doubt inevitable fall, but also hesitant to touch the bare, warm-looking skin.

“Hey, can you hand me that red input wire? And some pliers?” Her voice was muffled.

“How did you even get up there?” He asked, looking around and not seeing a chair or step-stool or even boxes.

“I just jumped! There should be plier’s in my purse.”

Ben watched in anticipated fear of an accident, but stepped back towards the kitchen counters where he found the red input for his speakers and her purse.

It was a soft leather white one, with gold zippers and a striped inside. It had some name on it and it reminded him of the purses his mother had. They were these expensive, basket-like things, that he would dip his small hand into, diving to scavenge quarters or candy or later, when he was young and angry, cash.

It felt a little like that now, opening her purse and digging around. But instead of a kid searching blindly, he was a man, with a much bigger, man’s hand. So it just felt stupid and awkward.

But unlike his mother’s purses, filled with lipsticks, jewelry, receipts, wallets and coin purses, Rey’s was a mess of tools. A hammer, wrenches, screwdrivers, driver heads, little plastic clips for wires and rubber casing, electrical tape, and oh, yeah, pliers.

He brought her both of them and looked up to catch the corner of her smile before she was back inside the vent.

“Are you installing my speakers inside the air conditioning?”

Her laugh echoed down the hall, like some sort of ominous ghost.

“No I’m just threading the wires through here so they don’t look so _bad_ next to all the beautiful paintings, and wallpaper—”

“Yeah.” He saw the logic before she even finished, looking around and nodding.

“Plus it’s just easier this way. Now you don’t have to nail anything in.”

He traced her handiwork from where it must have started, back in the kitchen. One speaker already sitting, prepped.

“Got this one.” She called and he came back quickly. “Help me down, will you?”

His eyes dropped back down to her little legs, the delicate sweep of her calf muscles and the small dimples of her ankles. His hand grasped her feet, and the blue ballet flats she wore, balancing her carefully.

She weighed nothing.

When she stepped into his hands like he was some sort of makeshift ladder, eventually he had to grab her by the waist, and God, no, really, she weighed nothing.

She was tiny, small, weightless. And yet, fuck, it felt as heavy as lifting one of grandmother’s portraits, holding her like this.

Because there she was, in his arms.

Smooth face and smooth expression, hair wild from being in a vent, but smile wide and thin. And those big brown eyes, caught in his arms and staring contently, like a trusting pet. A familiar bunny who liked being held. Who seemed to enjoy being there, waiting.

A Rabbit.

“One down, about fifty to go,” Rey smirked.

“Yes.” He set her carefully (but fucking quickly) down on the floor. And then she was off again.

Ben grabbed a few speakers and her purse before following along, trying not to think about having to hold her in his arms fifty more times.


	5. "Rabbit"

_2 Years Prior_

Rey slammed the brakes. The tires squealed loudly but barely reached her ears over the thumping bass and treble of her radio and the pop singers overblown lyrics, _“with me to love, darling!!”_ they sang.

She killed the engine, leaning an elbow out the window to make sure no one else was pulling up to the small blue post box. All clear. 

With one hand on her phone and the other sliding the shipping box from the passenger seat to her grip, she got out and dialed all at once. 

The phone rang as she closed the door, and the voicemail beeped as she dropped the package in the slot. 

“Pava, it’s Rey, I’m shipping your phone back now. All fixed up. Should be back to you on Tuesday, just—” 

Her phone vibrated on her cheek, and she pulled back with a frown. Another call. 

“—just start using a phone case yeah? Okay. Wire me the hundred when you can, or when you get it Tuesday, thanks, bye.” 

Sliding her thumb across her own phone case she answered. 

“Teek I said don’t ever call my cell!”

“Rey, can you do a gig tonight? I had some videographers—”

“You know I can’t, I wait tonight, you know I do, and you know I don’t do video.” 

“Shit!! Ass!! God dammit!!...what about tomorrow?”

“It’s Friday, I’m contracted Fridays for IT, you know this—”

“Fuck!”

“—and you know I won’t do video!!” 

She slammed back into her car, checked the road again as Bala Tik, cursed endlessly. The engine turned on and the radio blared, drowning him out momentarily.  

“—fuck-fucking busy I cannet ever cockin’ book anythi—”

“I've been telling you to get a proper model for ages for your shit—” 

“—I know, I know, but the bullshit I have to go through, just give me an hour tonight, I’ll spot you an 80 and pay you the rest next week—”

Rey laughed. "No way!! No, Teek, you have to warn me a week before. No Thursdays. No Fridays. No Mondays or Wednesdays either for that matter I’m clocked in at the shop.” 

“Oh come on!” 

“Bye Teek! Don’t call my cell!”  

She laughed when she hung up, tossing the device into a nice bounce on her passenger seat. 

Right. 3 p.m. Just enough time to book it back home, drop by the landlord to pay her rent, and to change, before heading down to KBs’.

Her fingers dragged the volume knob back up until the music overlapped the shifting gears and engine. 

Her house wasn’t too far. And just as she thought, her landlord was in, happy to see her as he always was happy to see money make it on time. 

“It’s a clean grand, Rey,”

“Yep, yep, I got it riiiiiiiiiiiiighht,” she drawled, pen dragging the messy cursive along the check. “...here.”

“If you re-leased for a year instead of paying month to month-”

Rey tore the check and slid it across the desk, “Same time next month! Thanks!” 

He shook his head as she left the office to take the stairs. 

When she unlocked her apartment and burst through, it was once again a race. Her keys and bag hit the floor when the door closed. The steel toe work boots tumbled across the wood, trailing behind the work overalls and the name badge. 

She washed her hands of car oil and grease grit, standing in her underwear and calculating her money in her head. A thousand, that would be gone by tomorrow. Which left her at 150 bucks. Not bad. With 100 bucks from Pava on Tuesday and a paycheck from the shop next Friday—

“SHIT!” She yelled into her towel, drying her face and hands. 

Car payment. It always snuck up on her. 

“Shit, shit, shit, shit—”    
  
Yep. A quick check on her phone confirmed it had in fact sneaked up on her. And after groceries, rent, and gas, she’d have a whopping 32 dollars and 45 cents to her name, 

“SHIIIIIIIIIIT!” 

She collapsed on her bed, rolling, elbows smacking into the mess of circuits, tools, and bubble wrap from her repair work and her feet digging into her laundry. 

It wasn’t that bad, really. Really! It wasn’t! She had been in worse shape. Way worse, so she could definitely stretch 30 bucks until Tuesday. She just had to go to wor—Work. 

Thursday. Today was Thursday. 

“Huxley.” Rey whispered at her ceiling. 

She shot up with a shout, a non-descriptive, fist-pumping, loud, “HARGH!” That took her full force out of bed and barreling to her closet, hopping over tool bags and cardboard boxes. 

The man swam to her mind like a memory from childhood. Warm and golden and cozy and achingly familiar. She could picture him now, table 4, section 2, facing the kitchen across from whatever random stranger he would bring in, with skin as pale as the table cloths and hair catching the dying sunlight to bring with him to his 6 o’clock dinner. Her favorite customer. 

Well, her only customer. She had started KB’s a year ago and had technically quit. The hours were shit and the distance too far, but management had begged her to stay to keep him. To keep Mr. Hux.  Insistent that the OCD lawyerman would be gone as soon as she was. So she stayed. Out of her sympathy to the ever-friendly fellow staff and for Mr. Hux’s unending, ever reliable, always guaranteed, income. 

He’d pay her at least 100 bucks, and she’d be singing all the way till she saw him again next week. 

She swung out and shimmied on her black dress and white undershirt for Krueth Blue’s, singing the pop song from the car with new, altered lyrics, “with me to love, Huxley!” 

She ran out the door with heels in her hand, smiling with excitement and already planning to call up friends to see a movie right after work, and maybe ice cream! Or some drinks and dancing—

Her excitement fell flat to the bottom of her shoes when at 6:00 p.m. she stood in front of table 4, section 2, and Hux sat there quietly. 

Alone. 

And he glanced up at her, for the first time, before adjusting the napkin in front of him just a smidge. 

“A cold bottle of Moët Rosé, two slices of carrot cake, to go, and the check, please.”

Rey’s notepad and pen dropped to her side, brow frowning until it hurt her face.

“Someone running late?” She asked him, trying to hide her hope.

“No.”

“Right away then.” 

“Thank you.” 

She took a reprieve with the Hostess, where she drew up his bill. 

“What’s going on with your lawyerman?”  
  
“I dunno, he just ordered takeout.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“I dunno.” Rey shook her head, punching in the order into the computer with an obvious pout. Damn. Damn it all. 

She got the bottle and the cake on her own, not wasting the chef’s time although the line cook turned to give her a scathing “Ooooooh! What’s happened here, cherie?”   
  
“Nothing! Leave it alone!”   
  
“It’s all that cake you stuff him with, it’s turning him orange!” 

Rey glared with a scrunched, disgusted expression, backing out of the kitchens and picking up the printed bill. 

When she placed the small, fancy take out boxes of cake and the champagne on the table she left him to it, retreating back to the hostess podium, where the two girls watched him write out his payment.    
  
“Look at it this way, at least you get off work… really, really early.”  
  
“Yeah.” Rey sighed. She dropped her chin in her hands, and watched him stand, buttoning his blazer and gathering his things. 

And turning to look at her. 

“Oh shit.”

He walked to the podium.

“Look alive, get up, he’s com—”

“Shh!!” 

“Get the—”

“Excuse me.” He said. Sliding his bill across the podium to the two of them. 

The Hostess near choked on her cough, turning slowly around to face the rest of the restaurant and leaving Rey alone with Mr. Hux. 

“Was everything alright Huxley—Hux— Mr. Hux?” Rey stammered, snatching the bill folio and pulling out his credit card and receipt. 

The Hostess hummed into a snort behind her. 

“...Yes. I would just like to pay immediately.” 

“Of course, I’ll enter that in for you right now. It only takes two… two… “

400 dollars. Well. No. It was a hundred for his drink and desserts. A hundred dollars for a non-dinner, this place was insane— _wait_. 300 dollars. A three. Hundred. Dollar. Tip. 

A mistake. No doubt, absolutely. 

Rey looked up, to find colorless eyes and carrot-cake hair staring back at her, soft and sharp all the same. With a perfect tie and straight mouth. A man of no mistakes. 

“Two seconds.” 

She made the transaction and pulled the cash from the register to clip into her notepad. 

“A receipt then?”   
  
“No, thank you.”

“Then you’re all set.”   


“Yes.”

He stood there. 

They stared at each other. 

Rey took in his set shoulders, moving incrementally with the weight of his bottle and cakes, but he didn't look away, or move. Or leave. He just stood there and then blinked a few times. 

Rey could feel the Hostess turn slightly to watch them. 

“I have paid.” He suddenly said. And Rey’s brows shot up at the statement. And the sight of him swallowing. 

“Ye….yep.” She nodded, losing her natural customer service voice in the face of the odd exchange. “You… sure have.”

“I’ve made my purchase then, and I am not your customer.”   
  
“...That’s about right.”

“Good.” he nodded, looking away towards the tables of people around them before turning back. “Rey.”

She straightened, having never heard the man, in a whole year, ever say her name. She was surprised he even knew it. 

Her shoulder bumped into the hostesses, the girl not even pretending not to listen anymore. 

“Yes… Mr. Hux?”

“Hux.”

“Yes, Hux?”

“I would like to extend an invitation to dinner.”

What?  
  
“What?” She asked, and then, “Here?”

“No. That would be quite inappropriate and I would not like to compromise your workplace with personal affairs, nor would I wish to obligate your position to me as some sort of… client. No.”

Rey didn’t mention that he was the only reason she had the job, or that she couldn’t feel obligated now that he already paid her. Oh. That had… probably been his intention.

“No. I have… prepared dinner myself at my flat. Which is forward, I am aware. But I wanted to take you somewhere not akin to waiting tables or where, rather, I could possibly wait  _ on you _ . So that we might be on equal grounds, or inverted ones. Should you accept.” 

Rey stared. 

“I know that your shift is likely not over. But I would be willing to come back or, wait, outside, of course, until you are. If you accept. Should you like to.”

He shifted, eyes dropping, before immediately snapping back up. Like an officer willing back his dignity; relying on training. A toy soldier. 

“Okay.” 

The hostess made a keening, gurgled noise that made Rey smile. 

Hux stared now. 

“Is the carrot cake for us?” She asked, pulling her purse from the podium and shoving her notebook and cash inside. 

“Ah—Y-yes, quite. It is. I know nothing of desserts.” He explained as she rounded the podium to stand in front of him. “And as you recommended it, I had you pegged for a rabbit. So it is this and celery tonight, full warning.” 

Rey laughed, loud and happy, the deadpan of his voice glazing over the joke like it wasn’t one and Rey smiled with discovery. He was funny. 

His own tight smile pulled, like clipped wings on a bird trying to extend. 

“Good!” 

They left more or less awkwardly. 

There was a dance of what-car-should-we-take, before she decided she would simply follow him to his apartment. He hummed in agreement and she spent a good 15 minutes of blissful silence of a drive where she said out loud, “What?” A few times, to no one in particular. 

His apartment was expensive. 

Not a surprising quality since this was a man who spent a few hundred dollars on one dinner every week. Not even a surprising dinner, but the same one, every time. He met her at the door of the building and they took the elevator up to his flat in silence. 

His apartment was also clean. 

It was all grays. And shapes. Like a catalog of stone slabs for decorating a yoga studio, or something, with enough floor space for a group of people to practice their downward facing dog. It even smelled like wax and hand sanitizer.

It wasn’t until she walked through to the kitchen, following him cautiously, that signs of life pieced themselves together. 

There were candles lit on a small, two-by-two cafe dinner table, which explained the wax smell, and soft music playing by the refrigerator. 

“Forgive me, I, I hadn’t known you’d say yes, so I may need a few minutes to prep things.”

“Should I take my shoes off or is this-?”   
  
“What?” 

“My shoes? Are you a no-shoes kind of—"   
  
“You can do as you please.” He nodded, shuffling through his kitchen drawers to retrieve a corkscrew for the champagne. 

Rey shifted her weight awkwardly before rolling her ankles out of her heels and tapping them into order near the wall. Then she took to glancing oddly at him before glancing oddly out the window. 

“I have a friend who has a view like yours.” She said, thinking of Poe, the fast talking, guitar-strumming chum of a guy. His

apartment had more posters in it though. And usually way more people. 

“I prefer the height.” He said. Simple. Rey shrugged at the non-explanation, and turned to find him setting down plates of dishes. Salad, white-sauce pasta, bread and olive oil. “I should warn you now—”   
  
Rey caught his eye, a pale reflection of nothingness caught in snow skin and bleeding hair. He was beautiful. “The service here is shit.”    
  
She laughed, loud and then silent, eyes filling with humor, and stomach in pain. 

And he smiled, fully now, in the safety of his home. His chest filled with the air of his obvious happiness. He looked softer than she’d ever seen anyone. Soft and beautiful. 

And dinner was delicious. He seated her, filled her glass, plated her dinner, and insisted she take a bite before him. He waved off her compliments, and then…

Said nothing. 

That wasn’t exactly true. He spoke, but only to prompt her with questions.  

“You’re from the city?” “Graduated?” “Do you enjoy it?” “Was that something you wanted to do?” “When was that?” “Is that so?” “What do you mean?” 

He was a volley of attention. Rapt. He barely ate after their salads, and neither did she, but still, he barely ate in the face of his interest, and it was hard to actually ask him anything when all she could do is answer and then get lost in her stories. 

“Do you miss it then?” 

“Miss what?” She asked her plate, taking a break from his curiosity to have a bite. 

“Working on cars. Fixing engines.”   
  
Rey shook her head, looking back up at him with her own confusion. “Why would I? I do it four days a week.”

They took turns exchanging the same puzzled expression. 

“Ah. You work two jobs?”   
  
“Ha! I work many jobs.”   
  
“What do you mean?”

Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays she worked at Carr’s Auto Care. Thursday evenings she worked Krueth Blue’s and Friday’s she worked IT for the downtown financial district. Any building with the Star logo, anyway. And she freelanced some tech repair through a little online forum she’d set up some years ago. She explained the schedule to him over the champagne, which, wow, had she known what KB’s served she might’ve tried sneaking a few bottles. 

“Your weekends must be special to you.” 

Rey shook her head. “Not really. I’m on apps all week to pick up other gigs when I can.” 

“What do you mean?”   
  
“You know those online classifieds? For moving or selling furniture, or looking for dog walkers or whatever?”   
  
“You walk dogs?   
  
“I have. I’ve painted houses, babysat, fixed some sinks, setup internet—that’s the popular one, no one knows how to get a router going. Or you know, weird stuff.”   
  
“Weird stuff.” Hux looked shorter, leaned forward like that. 

“Yeah like… driving someone to the doctor, or following their cheating husband, or sexual stuff.”

Hux’s champagne glass smacked against his plate as he set it down quickly. “And you do this?”

“Not all of that. After the first cheating husband I decided that I couldn’t get into personal affairs like that, it’s tough even if the pay is really good, you know? Most of the time they are anyway, cheating I mean. And it sucks taking money from someone who just needs an outsider to tell them what they already know.”   
  
“Yes.” He said distractedly.    
  
“Sorry, is this not dinner conversation?”   
  
“No, it isn’t.” He shook his head. 

Rey laughed, once again endearing herself to his slightly blunt and morose response. He smiled. “But no, it’s… that’s not it. I… I didn’t know you had so many jobs.”   
  
“Why would you?”   
  
“Fair point. I suppose you could say the same of the things you don’t know about me.” 

“I know you like sashimi.”   


He laughed this time. A sharp, snappy, sound, quick and precise. “Yes!”   
  
“I know what you do on Thursdays, Huxley.” Rey pushed back her plate and sunk into her seat. 

“Huxley.” He repeated, sounding like he was saying a word in a different language, as if saying it might help him understand what it meant. 

Ooops. Rey cringed, scrunching up her face and closing her eyes from his judgement. “Yeah sorry… your card is labeled Hux, and the reservations… so I assumed Mr. Hux, yes, but also maybe it was short for something like Huxley or Huxcliff, or something rich.”   
  
“Something rich.” He repeated, a hand tapping the amused smile on his lips. “No, my last name is Hux. As is my firm, named for my father. My first name is Armitage.”

“Arm-at-age?”

“Arm-it-age, yes.” 

“Oh, God, I hate it.” 

His smile peeled to show his brilliantly white teeth, and he nodded somewhat bashfully at his plate. “Yes. It’s not the most catchy.”  
  
“Armitage. It sounds like something on the menu at KB’s.” She whined. 

They laughed together, his fingers picking at the rim of his glass absently, when he quieted. “It is rich like you presumed, but Huxley does sound more... “ 

“Better?”   
  
“More better.” He agreed, standing suddenly and grasping for their dishes. 

She watched him move about his kitchen with an extreme familiarity and comfort. Nothing like the tight and prim movements that was his normal restaurant behavior. He’d even removed his jacket and vest during dinner, standing now in slacks and a button up. Tie thrown over his shoulder. Oddly and criminally casual. Human. 

“Cake then?”   
  
“Yes please!”   


He came back with the dish and a nod. “One for the rabbit, and one for me.”

“Thank you.”   
  
“Of course.”

But when she picked up the fork and began he didn’t. Rey watched him watch his plate. 

“Is that how you came across _Honey Love Kits and Kinks_?” 

“Hgh—?”

Hux had taken a bite, and was chewing, vigorously, staring at the table, as Rey reeled, her brain suddenly thrust into the sticky stretch of bondage pvc, familiar but unexpected, leaving her, figuratively and ironically, gagged. 

She stared. 

Hux glanced up at her, before uncharacteristically dropping his knife to a clatter. “It isn’t like—” He paused, looking away. “Damn.” His hands scrambled for the napkin on the table, covering his mouth and swallowing a lot more than just his food. “It isn’t as if I simply knew that, I promise, it’s more—see, last weekend—”   
  
Rey blinked slowly. 

“Yes, well, no, let me— let me clarify.” He tried, napkin dropping and beautiful face twisting into redder, more beautiful humiliation. “I, have, I am, I happened. Yes, I happened to be in attendance of the Sexposition Expo last weekend.” 

And then she was laughing. How could she not? Could anyone have imagined Mr. Hux of table six to ever say such ridiculous words?   


“I had no prior knowledge of you being there, or, or, or had any prior experience in attendance of anything like that before, in fact, I had only been accelerated there after purchasing some items to sate curiosity, and, had, after seeing that it had been you, which I, of course, recognized,” He glanced at her, looking lost, but taking a breath, “Had thought that you’d be a good friend—no, friendly, friendly face to speak to about it, since I, have not, have no one to speak to about these things and I, I am in fact a novice, and you an obvious and unexpected expert, not that the thought of an actual date was not a good alternative, I’d always enjoyed you, your, your temperament of, ah, oh,”  
  
She was smiling. 

His brows frowned, but his shoulders lowered from their tenseness. He deflated, a relaxed cat after being cornered. 

“It reveals itself to be a moot plan, though,” he sighed. “Coming to find you’ve most likely accepted that gig for cash.” 

Hux buried his face in his hands over his carrot cake. She admired the matching cream of the desert to the smooth similarity in his gelled hair. 

“You think it’s weird.” 

“Of course I do.” 

“It’s not.” She smiled. He still didn’t look at her. “There was like a thousand people there! None of them are weird. And that’s not the first time. I met up with Teek, the owner, about two months ago and I’ve done a few nights for him. “

Those mirror colored eyes came back to flash the reflection of the night sky back at her. “Yes?”   
  
“Yeah! A few. Nothing deep, I don’t do sex work, just the modeling. And no video. Mostly he puts on a few suits and I sit around.”   
  
“Like the ribbons?”   
  
“The ribbons were fun! That was my first time with those.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“Yes, it took forrrreeeeevvverrr to set up though. I nearly read a whole book by the time him and Tali, his assistant, were done.” 

“Was it uncomfortable? You were up by your wrists.”   
  
“You know, I thought it was going to be,” Rey took a bite and was happy to see Hux mimic her, settled again, eased. Comfortable. “But it really wasn't! I think it’s the weight distribution.” 

“And the top, or, the corset?”   
  
“Oh, it was uhhhh, a girdle. Underbust. Thing.” 

“Zip up from the front?”  
  
“The back. And it had a hook on it that we didn’t use. For rope or something if you wanted, I think? Sorry, I’m not an expert either I just wear what they tell me to.” 

“I see.” 

Hux shifted, smiling and then not, as if worried he shouldn’t be. Rey grinned.

“Why? You want to wear one?”   
  
Bingo. Huxley went three shades of red, pushing his fork into a screech on the plate. She wondered if his skin could match his hair if she talked about just the right thing. 

“N-not in so.. I have, have had, I’m uncertain of what I want from that world at the moment.”  
  
“You’ve not tried anything?”   
  
“I had only just discovered a few things a few months ago. In the summer. I bought a few things and, got curious. I’ve read, of course, I just—”   
  
“What have you bought?”   
  
“Harnesses mostly, a couple crops, some rope sets, there’s a gag—”   
  
“Show me.”

They leave the desserts to the empty skyline, and retreat across the shades of grey in the apartment to his bedroom. 

“This is embarrassing.” He states, opening the door. He repeats this when he opens a drawer, or when he pulls a box from his closet. 

“Oh this is cute!” Rey tells him, picking up a set of handcuffs with red fur and heart padlocks. 

“This is embarrassing.”   
  
“You haven’t tried any of it?”   
  
“How can I?” He almost pleads, heaving, kneeling by his bed to lift up a crop and wiggle it on his sheets. “I’m not exactly the type.”   
  
“What do you mean? What type?”   
  
“The type to… “

He goes quiet and Rey sits, turning to shuffle through the leathers. She picks up some of the rope. “Teek used some of these on the model after me, these take long too.”   
  
“Hm. The ornate ones do.”   
  
“Can you do them?”   
  
“Yes, let me see.” 

He takes the rope at her gesturing, leaning back on his heels to pull a length across his arm, twisting it about his elbow. His fingers move with that preciseness she’d seen him use with his utensils a hundred times before. Just as deft at tying knots as he was cutting sashimi. 

“See, you know what you’re doing. More than me, and I’ve been in the damn stuff.”

He considers her.

“I don’t have the time.”   
  
Rey just laughs. “Sure.” 

They sit there, on his floor and bed, passing each other things and explaining them in turns. Rey tells him about the ones she’s worked in, how they feel, what she liked, what she didn’t. Hux listens just as intently as before, but this time he talks too, explains why he bought what, shows her some of the things he learned online, sometimes tells he what he thought he might do with it. 

They laugh a lot, smile a lot, and it’s only by the slow, transient talking and touring of his apartment that she eventually finds herself at the door. 

It isn’t even that she wants to leave. And it seems he doesn’t wants her to either. 

“Are you busy tomorrow?”   
  
“I work IT.”   
  
“That’s right.”

She dangles her heels in her hands.    
  
“Thank you for dinner.”   
  
“What about after?”   
  
“After work?”   
  
“Can I pick you up?”   
  
“Yeah, sure, if you like.”

“I do.” 

 

***

 

And he does. 

He picks her up after work on Friday. They go out for dinner this time, laughing, talking, laughing some more. He’s funny, funny unlike she’s ever known. And beautiful, of course. 

They talk work, he complains about it, mostly. But she can tell he likes it. He likes doing what he does, and he’s proud of himself. He enjoys being a lawyer, yes, but enjoys being a boss of lawyers more. 

She explains that she doesn’t have a preference to what she does. She has a passion for cars and technology, but really just likes to do anything with her hands. That she likes learning, which is partially to blame for the random jobs she takes. Like she’s always finding challenges to sign up for.

He drops her off Friday night. 

They go to the park on Saturday. 

They talk family. She’s an orphan. He wishes he was one. They decide not to talk family, with smiles on their faces and hands meeting briefly. 

“Kindred, we are, then.”

He goes out of town on Sunday, but calls her. 

She tells him about the new clothes she had tried with Teek and the gig she did at a club. They laugh about stealing them. She teases him with ideas of  _ him _ in them. He laughs, hums, asks her to stop flirting. She doesn’t. 

On Monday he calls again. They agree not to do anything about their working relationship at the restaurant. This makes her laugh, the professional sound of it. He teaches her some business jargon. She teaches him slang.

On Tuesday he calls her on the break from the shop and asks her advice about sock colors. 

On Wednesday she calls him just to see if she can make him laugh again. She can. 

“I don’t think I’ve smiled this much in my life.”   
  
“You’re a lawyer.” 

On Thursday he has dinner as usual and Rey waits as usual. His client is stuffy and boring. He smiles at her twice, denies his last glass of Rose, tips her, the same amount as always, nothing more nothing less, and they take his car back to his apartment. The carrot cake comes too. 

“For you, rabbit.”

They talk politics while Rey fixes the inputs on his television. They watch a movie and debate the quality of the dialogue. It’s bad, but entertaining. He spills wine on his couch, curses, and then they laugh, trying to clean it together. 

He drives her home, and says goodbye with a soft caress to her cheek. 

He picks her up after work Friday. They finish the show from the night before.   
  
“I have to go to Teek’s tomorrow.”   
  
“I’ll take you.”  
  
“Okay.”

He waits in his car the entire time, mortified and humbled, but excited when she returns. She tells him all about it. He lives vicariously through her casualness. They go to the movies. 

And they continue. 

Weeks begin to form. Hux takes her to work, Rey calls him from one day to the other, Hux returns to table 6 with a client, Rey serves him, they go to his house, so on, so on. 

They hold hands.

When they kiss, it’s a month past their meeting. 

He drops her off at Carr’s Auto Care after breakfast.

“See you,”  
  
“Pick you up in a few hours.” 

She kisses him goodbye. It’s sudden, natural. Odd, but right. They pause, stare at each other, chuckle, smile, then kiss again. She goes to work, warm and loved and oblivious to the fact of it, but happy. 

It isn’t until a week later, a week of many, many more spontaneous, quick, sloppy, kisses that Hux leads her delicately to the bedroom, fingertips trailing questions along her waist as he does so.  

She answers with a grin into his neck. 

“Yes?”

“Yes!”

They fuck through smiles, laughs, sighs, and drawn out pleasured expressions that carry them to sleep. 

Two months continue the same way. 

It isn’t until one night that she’s drawing images into his hair, head on her lap, television on, that she notices. 

“I haven’t been to my apartment in weeks, Huxley.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
“I need clothes.”

“Keep them here.”

She moves in. 

It’s a practical decision. She had no lease, and they both save money on gas, and he has an extra room. She doesn’t use it, but it’s there for the excuse. 

He buys her clothes too. 

It’s their first argument actually. After the first gift of a dress, and then shoes, and then  _ another _ dress, Rey complains about the money. 

Hux falters, hurt, frustrated. He struggles through self conscious insecurity to explain. Money is easy for him. He enjoys good tailoring. Clothing can be his affection.   
  
“And you’re beautiful. I’d like to enjoy that.”

When his hands caress the silk, she understands. 

Her closet fills. 

Eventually, with no rent to pay, Rey quits the auto shop, and shuts down her tech forum. There’s no need for the money, and she’s started ordering parts to the apartment for fun anyway. She spreads motherboards and circuits across his coffee table. She rewires herself a new computer while he practices his next meeting presentation, reciting around the living room. 

“Maybe that’s not clear enough.”   
  
“I like it. I like your voice.”   
  
“Thank you, rabbit.”

He lays out her clothes for her in the morning, dresses her in skirts he finds cute, she teases him and tells him to wear one, he turns red, runs away to his suits. 

She gets him in one that night, in the dim lighting of their bedroom, and he can’t say no with his hands tied in red-fur-heart-shaped handcuffs. He doesn’t anyway. He kisses her when he cums, ruining the chiffon and whispering, _“thank you, thank you, thank you.”_

She quits Teeks too. They’re both pros now in their own way.    
  
He drives them both to KB’s. 

She serves him and his client. 

They go home together. He cooks her a dinner. She eats while they watch TV. They share a cake. They fuck. They sleep. 

One morning she lays out clothes for him. A set of leather, polished and soft, with metal rings shining over the suit. A blueprint of scandal over a foundation of familiarity. 

“I couldn’t.”   
  
“Try it.”

He leaves to work red faced and shaky, with a prim back and lines just barely visible through his shirt. 

He calls her at lunch.    
  
“It’s tight, and when I sit, it’s, rabbit, it’s too much-”   
  
“Do you want to come home and take it of—”   
  
“No, it’s...no. I like it. Thank you.”

She had him on the couch that night. Melted, blissful and pliant, a strawberry and vanilla mess of a man, sweet and pretty. He shows gratitude on his knees in their bedroom, his fox-hair hidden from view under her dress. 

They sleep.

“I love you.” He says, quietly in the white waves of their bedsheets, his hair golden in sunlight, a new  _ good morning _ that takes her breath away but doesn’t because of course he does, hasn’t he always? 

“I love you too.” She says back, and his body curls around her, like this is the way it’s always been done after they say it, like they always have. 

They marry. 

Her friends mention that it seems fast, when she tells them about the proposal. Hux does it at home, with champagne and cake and a ring he’d bought weeks ago. 

Hux explains he’s done a lot of waiting in his life. 

Rey has too. She says yes. 

It’s in a courtroom of his, with his assistant as officiant and another of his co-worker’s as witness. Poe plays the guitar for them. Finn cries and holds her bouquet. 

They go on honeymoon to New York for two weeks, where they see nothing of the city, but enjoy every moment in their hotel, laughing, smiling. 

His apartment’s theirs now. 

She doesn’t quit KB’s though. 

“I have one order of the Prime Rib, side of asparagus and baked potato, a glass of Chardonnay and chocolate ganache cake when you’re ready for it. 

“Perfect, thank you.”

“I’ll get the drinks first then—” 

“Miss, you forgot—!” 

“Oh, I never do. The Ahi Salad, Sashimi on the side, with a glass of sparkling water and a slice of carrot cake.”

Hux nods, gives her a smile, small and sweet. 

She winks. “I never forget Huxley.”

“Thank you, rabbit.”

“Huxley?” The client asks. 

“She’s my wife.” Hux explains. 

Rey laughs her way into the kitchens. 


	6. Parlour

After he sees the laundry men off, he heads back inside.

They are the last to leave, and at this point, the sun has crested far enough to rest its edge on the horizon.

It makes the black monstrosity that is the Skywalker manor look like a ruddy, bloody red, and casts the rolling green acres of the premises in a washed out lilac. It would almost seem garish if the haziness of the bright sun didn’t make everything a soft pastel.  

And if the house wasn’t bursting with brassy, big band music, swelling from the open door.

His shoes don’t clack, or they do, and the music blaring from each corner of the walls is simply too loud to hear it.

He calls. _Solo! Rabbit!_ But can’t hear his own voice either. He shakes his head and goes for the ~~servants quarters~~. Ben’s quarters.

The music swells and fades, swells and fades, passing each speaker, until it’s loudest in the ~~kitchen~~ parlour, as it stands now, where he finds them.

Dancing.

Well. More or less.

His wife is dancing. Her little ballet shoes working to their inspired function, sliding around decade-old tile and kicking up here and there as her hips pivot, and she shimmies her legs and snaps her shoulders, each movement a perfect synchronization to the jazzy tympanic beat.

Her arms are outstretched, pulling, insisting, grasping, tugging— _begging_ , the bigger hands laced in her palms to move with her.

And Ben, the big oaf, _looms._ His body simultaneously backing away from her and swaying in the smallest most unfulfilled two-step that he’d ever seen.

Rey is laughing.

Ben is staring.

It’s pathetic. Embarrassing.

Adorable.

“What’s this now?” Hux tries, barely able to get himself heard over the singer’s bluesy crooning.

Both of them snap their heads in his direction.

Rey smiles, showing teeth and fluttering her eyelashes.

Ben spasms, _seizes_ , those large hands trying to escape Rey’s like she’s made of burning coals. But they get nowhere fast, her arms jerking only a little before holding tight, the hidden strength in her arms showing in a flashing flex of muscle before stilling.

“Huxley!” She calls, “Come dance with us!”

He approaches, not at all convinced that there was really an _‘us,’_ in the statement.

Ben tries to edge away, his sneakers shifting behind Rey’s flats as if to avoid him. And for a moment Hux is actually impressed and pleased that the bigger, stronger man is so obviously frightened with him before he gets annoyed with the idea.

He kisses his wife’s cheek, before his gaze flicker to the large doe-eyes that stare inches above him.

“I would hardly call that dancing.”

Ben flushes at the accusation.

“Well come on then!” Rey challenges, dropping her grip on Ben like a predator might with forgotten prey. Hux imagines a bunny letting go of an oversized hound.

She fits into his arms like a familiar stretch of fabric. Satin ribbon. Pliant leather.

He can’t help but let his lips curl at the sight of her bright, happy face, and body already wavering in his arms, moving to the beat. He twists, outward, sliding his loafers along the tiles slowly before snapping all the way around again. A fun, lazy, spot-turn into a chassé that has her giggling.

He grins, and sweeps her left, sways her right, before letting go of one of her hands to grab at her lower back, arching her spine as he canters, dips, and twirls her back to starting position.

She’s all laughs, all smiles, and Hux finds his tight pursed-lipped mouth trying not to follow her lead as their eyes narrow in happiness.

He’s distracted by movement, and looking, finds himself sharing the smile with Ben Solo.

Sharing. Ha. Ben Solo isn’t smiling. Not quite. He’s soft-browed and half-lidded. A faraway look that doesn’t match the tense, inward posture of his body.

Hux’s grin lessens, just a little.

“Don’t tell me the army didn’t teach you how to dance!”

Ben looks confused, and confronted, at having been yelled at. And it’s entirely possible the man didn’t even hear the words over the music.

He let’s go of Rey, soundlessly clacking to Ben, and grasping his hands to set them on his hips.

Ben’s arms come easy, probably because he hadn’t been expecting it, _at all._

“The fuck—”

“Would you rather be the lady?”

“I would rather not be anything.”  

Hux’s fingers dig into those thick palms of his, placing his other hand on his shoulder. Just as thick. More so.

Good lord, Ben Solo is large. He’d always known it, of course, but maybe not quite so ~~intimately~~ accurately. They are the same height, or at least he tries to remind himself that he is. But Ben is every bit as wide. Every bit as intense.

The drums kick, the chorus blares, and Hux taps Ben’s shin with his shoe tip to make him move.

He pushes them into a simple chassé, and Ben fumbles, wanting to stomp whole footed instead of heel-toe.

The action is so terribly bad and uncomfortable that Hux actually cranes his neck and laughs. His mirth shakes him so bad he might actually fall—if not for Ben’s grasping his ribs on instinct so he doesn’t.

“Hux—dammit—”  His wife is somewhere behind them, laughing too, always a pleasant sound.

So he dips, further, rests his wrists on the dips of Ben’s collar bone along his open hoodie.

“Pull me back up, and move like your ice skating.”

Ben’s lips puff out in annoyance at being taught, but his brow goes heavy with concentration. He picks Hux up, just enough that his toes are the only thing kissing the floor before they’re set to starting position. But his glide is horrendous.

“Like your skating—”

“I’ve never fucking—”  
  
“Oh, for God's sake—”

They’re both looking down now, so they both watch as Hux places his feet, one-by-one, on top of Ben’s sneakers.

“What are you twelve?”

“Glide!”

Ben swings with a curse, their forward hands laced once more, and the other on Hux’s lower back. It’s a sloppy twist, full of annoyance and force, but they  _move._ Dependent only on himself and holding everything of Hux’s weight in his one hand, Ben clears the expanse of the living room in two sweeps, each step a beat of a symbol and drum and each jerk of hips a change in chords.  

Hux is grinning, he can’t help himself, for having been right, and for the pride at being able to cause the change. And… because Ben’s thumb stretches from one side of his back while his index curls around to his ribs. Large. Encompassing. Solo is a monster of a man, and it’s more so evident now, in the obvious height difference.

Hux is eye level to Ben’s lips, when they should really be the same height. Damn. Maybe because of his backward lean for the dance?— but when he stretches to correct it, to challenge the man’s stature, they find themselves looking at each other.

They swing, left, right, Ben staring at him in confusion, shifting to compensate for Hux’s wriggling. Looking almost offended Hux seemed to want to get away.

“Let me lead.”

“What?” Ben yells, leaning forward so his neck and ear are exposed to Hux’s mouth.

He rolls his eyes, stepping off the man’s shoes and wrapping his arm to jerk Ben’s waist into his grip. It comes easy just like before, out of surprise.

“Hey!"

“Let me lead!”

His knee bends to slide up Ben’s thigh and press it backward.

“Ghn—” Ben grunts in his ear, arm over his shoulder now, like a woman’s position ought to be.

“There, now do as I say so you understand how it’s done.”

They move again, but this time clipped. Clean. They chassé quickly, to the beat, and twist. Ben is a fumbling mess, his steps trailing along, stepping on Hux’s loafers and body trying to move in odd directions. But Hux’s lead is demanding and he falls into place.

Brown eyes, dark and deep, pin him from behind thick royal lashes and Hux’s is sure to grin wide. To give them something to look at.

He pushes harshly, a fast four-step that ends with his right foot sliding Ben’s left backward to a bend. Pushing the man to a smaller height with a tense snap of his shoulders and a crane of his neck.

“Hux—” Ben breathes and he can barely hear it but it sounds _wonderful._

He let’s go in a rush, hands wiping away his smile as he turns.   “I’ve warmed him up for you, rabbit, have at!”

Rey is eyeing him with a look he ignores, all cheeks.

She lets it go it seems, grabbing Ben instead, and the man’s face is already pink flushed from spinning around with Hux. Now it’s practically red as he’s forced into a towering lean above her tiny frame.

“No— come on, I don’t—”  

“Please?!” Rey asks, her bottom lip coming out and her hands planting his on her hips.

And Hux doesn’t hear, but sees, the little _“okay,”_ the man whispers. How could he not? Nothing ever wins against Rey’s little looks of innocent injustice. And she knows it.

Neither of them leads each other. It’s an odd thing to watch. Two people familiar with the general gist of what a dance is supposed to be, but both comprising themselves to compensate for the other rather than make demands. A dance of empathy.

Rey pulls backward and Ben lets himself bend forward, head dipping into the crook of her shoulder, where he sways her left, and she lets him, arms sliding up his sides to keep balance.

They look more like drunken lovers, then dance partners, trying to find the best angle to hold each other or take off each other's clothes.

Hux blinks, wipes his mouth once more, feeling warm and shaky. Damn hot. Old houses like this were always damn hot and over-insulated.

The music dies in a slow fade. A wary crescendo. And he’s slightly guilty for taking up so much of the bulk of it before Rey could properly have what she started. But she looks happy, when she parts with Solo, twisting in a little bow.   

“Mr. Skywalker.”  

“Mrs. Hux.”

Ben’s a little damp too. His hair sticking to his temples or curling upward at the ends. He glances at him, over his wife’s head, looking no less ~~afraid~~ nervous. He was nervous.

_Hm._

The silence stretches. A sudden sharp comparison. A ringing in the ears.

“It is about time we head into the city anyway.” He says it to gauge the reaction. He gets parted lips of surprise and wide pleading eyes. Interesting. “We have a reservation.”  

He predicts his wife before she even begins, eyes on her and arm propping up his elbow, ready to listen to her case.

“But— what about Ben?”  

“Solo, Mrs. Packer should have a dinner prepared for you. The rest of the staff has gone now, there shouldn’t be anything left—

“Huxley, Ben doesn’t have anywhere to go for New Years.”

“I—No, I, I wasn’t going to go anywhere. It’s fine.”

He’s already conceded, in his heart. They were going to stay here. They were going to eat dinner with him and watch the countdown on the television or some such nonsense. But he wants to hear how it is that Rey comes to the idea. Wants to know the ~~excuse~~ reason.

“He can’t be alone on New Years.” She looks almost angry, but not at him and not at Ben.

So that's it.

_Kindred spirits, then._

“It’s fine.” Ben urges, arms holding himself. His head shaking insistently.

“Where are the grounds keys for the lake house?” Hux suddenly asked.

They both give him confused looks.  

“If I’m going to stay in this Gothic catastrophe of a house I need good wine to do it.”

 


	7. "Solo" Part 1

_ 4 years prior _

 

The worst thing about lawyers was all their fucking bullshit. 

There wasn’t any other word for the act of calling a line, talking to a receptionist, getting transferred to an associate, transferred back to the receptionist, who forwards you to an attorney, who offers only a chance for an offer, sending you back to the receptionist to schedule an offer for an offer, and interviewing for said offer, before having to complete a screening, and then getting counseling on the details of the offer—

—just to be denied. 

It was a big, fancy, overblown, pretentious, condescending, god damn, fucking bullshit game to say no. 

No. 

When Ben heard the words, he’d stood up from his chair, grabbed the legs with his hands, and hurled it across the office room. It smashed into a bookcase and a few shelves of trophies, or trinkets, or whatever the fuck— it didn’t matter. It made a good enough noise to couple with his yell of, “FUCK YOU!” 

That’s what mattered. 

The door banged pretty loudly too, but he couldn’t hear it in his ears, pounding as they were with anger. With blood. 

The offices of Hux LLC were crowded, which was just fucking great, because everyone could come out and watch him storm away in shame. And they did. The receptionist he’d gotten to know so well in the past two weeks gaped at him from her desk, her expression a mirror image of the rest of the employees stopping in their halls, peering from their doors, or peeking above their files to stare. 

Fine. 

Fuck ‘em. Fuck them and their bullshit. Their stupid shoes, their suits, their big wooden doors and gold watches— fuck them and their fucking memos, appointments, brunches, and briefcases— 

His feet hit the stairs in a rush down the gold tiles of the old building, and he cleared the first landing so quickly, so focused on the shape of his sneakers and jeans that he almost smashed face first into someone. 

“Ben Solo.”

He stopped dead on the last step, looking down into a white face that clashed so badly with bright, orange hair, Ben had to squint. 

“I understand it you had a meeting just now with our head representative and,” The curl of the tight accent had Ben looking around, watching the others of the lobby stop and stare at them both. As if he might be imagining this person. “I predict it did not go well.”  
  
He said nothing, considering the man again. He’s small. Sharp. Odd looking. One of those ancient white marble sculptures in the museums his mom used to take him too, but wrapped in a suit and tailored to a razor’s edge.

Maybe he’s here to stop him because of the damages.

“No. It didn’t. Excuse me.” He steps down and shoves a shoulder on the man (boy, really, the shoulder is tiny and gives easy when he jams his way through.) 

“Mr. Solo, I think it was a mistake for them to deny you legal representation and as an attorney of this firm, I would like to amend that mistake immediately by taking you on as my private client.”

He talks fast enough to cross the distance Ben’s large strides make. 

Ben turns around fully at the words, surprised, but no less suspicious. 

The man smiles, and it looks practiced. The muscles all do their job for the expression but the weird colorless eyes don’t. 

“Shall we talk about it over lunch?”  
  
Ben scoffs, hands waving, ready for more bullshit.

“What, in a week? Are you going to fucking pencil me in with your assistant?”  
  
“No. I mean now. We can take my car. I know a place.”

It isn’t until they’re seated face-to-face in the bright sunlight of some fancy, white-tablecloth restaurant that Ben puts two and two together, even before the waitress does it for him. 

“Good afternoon, what are we having today?”  
  
“Where’s Rey?”  
  
“I’m sorry Mr. Hux, she’s not scheduled for Tuesdays.”  
  
“Fine. My usual, then,”  
  
“I’m sorry, your usual is?”

Hux Jr. holds some semblance to Hux Sr. but it’s all wrong. 

Brendol Hux, the man whose bookcase he’d just ruined, with silver threaded hair, was white at the edges; age slicked down into place with gel and product. His hands had been adorned in a ring or two, with a watch covering his wrists and cufflinks to match. He’d been jovial looking, even with all the insult-hidden-legal-terms that had spilled from his thin lips. _‘Unreputable,’ ‘common background,’ ‘working standards.’_

This Hux, the son, (Armitage) wears the same hairstyle. But where Brendol’s was dead, his is alive. Fire and gold and bright (shiny and new.) Like a freshly painted sports car. His hands are bare, naked, wrists airy and weightless as he talks. Thin. Paper white and frail. He looks with no emotion. The smile is gone and replaced with a content neutrality in his face that makes him look smooth, with full lips and a perfect line of a nose. Symmetrical. Orderly. Ben can hear it in his speech. In the exact amount of time he spends on each word. _“Salad,” “Sashimi,” “on the side,” “cake,” “please,”_

There’s a difference there that’s important. 

“And you?”  
  
“I don’t want anything,” Ben shakes his head, already knowing he can’t afford whatever it is they serve.  
  
“Can you bring him a slice of cake as well then?”  
  
“Yes sir.”  
  
She leaves and Ben sighs.

“You don’t have to—”  
  
“I’m not going to force you to order, but I will be polite enough to have you enjoy something while  _I_ eat in front of you.”

Ben doesn’t argue with that. What the fuck does he know about manners? 

“We should spend most of our time talking anyway,” Hux continues, “get to know each other.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because I imagine, as your lawyer, we’ll be spending quite a bit of time together until your case is processed and eventually won.”  
  
“You think you can do it?”  
  
Hux laughs, but it’s quick, short, and forgotten (sort of, he remembers it later, alone.) “I know I can do it, but my ability isn’t the challenge we face.”  
  
“What is?” He’s excited. He tries to curb it, because this can’t be a real, formal meeting of a client and a lawyer. They’d snuck away. This is scheming, he knows it is.  

Time.” Hux explains, sharp eyes slicing the distance between them. “If you want the company, it’s going to take a few years.”  
  
“The house.” He corrects, pressing fingers into the tablecloth until it wrinkles. “I want the house.”  
  
“You can’t have the house without having everything. It’s only an asset. A piece.”  
  
“Fine. Whatever. I want the house, the name, the money—”  
  
“Yes. Everything.” He clarifies again.

Ben is grateful that this younger Hux has no bullshit. No terms. No jargon. Just cold, exact, answers. So he tests it. 

“How long would it take?”  
  
“It’s not just the paperwork, the ordinances, or the board— the will itself has terms. Inheritance can only be fulfilled to someone giving legal proof of the expectations Skywalker had for his heirs.” 

“The military.”  
  
“Yes.” Hux nods. And when his drink comes, Ben watches the man slowly poor his own sparkling water into a glass, shaking his head with a downward frown. “Never coming here on a Tuesday again.”

“I’ve been enlisted for the last two months.”  
  
“You need field experience, at least a day of it, for it to count, but yes, you’ve started already. That’s good.” Hux considers him. “But you need schooling too. Classes for business, for entrepreneurship. Basics in engineering, in binary, your grandfather did not make an easy path to complete in a fast amount of time.”  
  
Ben rolls his neck.

“Tell me about it.”

“And there’s your name, too.”  

“What about it?” He asks, shifting upward in his seat. On the defense.  
  
Hux looks tentative, to his credit. “You’ll have to change it, you have to be an official Skywalker. Not a… Solo. Or an Organa for that matter.”  
  
He swallows.  
  
“Sure.” Whatever. 

He doesn’t care about that. 

He doesn’t. 

“How long do you think it’s going to take?”  
  
“Well… let’s see… duties in the military what they are, legal proceedings being drawn out, hiding it all under the nose of my father, and predicting a noisy bit of drama on the part of your family, not to mention the board looking to deter any chance you get to own their company cash cow… three.. Four years.”  
  
“Four years?” All his excitement runs dry with two words. 

Hux gives him an exasperated expression. “Oh please. Do you even know how long active duty lasts? You won’t be able to move into any house until your first posting is done.”  
  
“I need to get out of this fucking city.”  
  
“Yes well, the Army—”

“The marines.”

“—the marines will take care of that before I do.” Their food arrives, and Hux ignored him to continue talking at his salad. “I’m just going to make sure you have somewhere to live when you get back.”  
  
Ben stares at his carrot cake, lifting a fork to press imprints into the icing. Four years.

“Look at it like you’re going to college. Which, technically, you’ll have to do too. Online. That should be enough to appease the board.”  
  
“Why do you even want to help me?”  
  
Hux’s knife and fork still over his dish. They stare at each other for a few moments and for a second Ben thinks maybe he’s broken the man.

“If it isn’t obvious to you, the Skywalker account has more untapped monetary value in it then anyone knows what to do with. Taking you on, even pro bono for four years, is an investment of millions for me. Billions for you. We’d both be filthy rich.”

He knows that. He does, but he often forgets it when all he can think of is how that money is an excuse to escape for him. He feels a little stupid for asking now, but doesn’t regret it when Hux continues. 

“And… I absolutely can not stand my _fucking_  fool of a father,” Hux cusses like he normally doesn’t. (It sounds cruder because of it.) “I abhor the routines I have to watch him inflict on the company for, what? Pride. Pah—”

“You want to be the boss?” Ben guesses.  
  
“You don’t?” Hux accuses, silverware snapping to the table as he takes on the challenge. It makes Ben sit up. “You didn’t come out of schooling, forced into a pair of shoes your parents laid out for you, with their own legs, one foot in the past, and the other in the present just enough to trip you as you attempt to pass them—”

He slows, and Ben lets him, watching that tight suit pinch and fold as Hux’s eyes change colors multiple times, looking and moving everywhere with passion, anger, annoyance, drive—

Nothing like his father, really. 

“Of course, of course, of course, I do. So do you. That’s why we’re here. Because we’re both living under the shadow of a name that suits us better than the ones who have it.”  


Hux’s knife is back, and it slices down to screech on his plate. 

They eat. Silently. 

Ben’s heart is thudding in his chest, banging on it, ready. Excited. 

Sugar on his tongue and a burning in his stomach.

“You think we can do it?”

“Of course we can.”  
  
“How do you know?” 

“Because we’re young, and time is in our favour.”  
  


* * *

 

Hux becomes part of his daily regimen. 

Maybe it feels that way because his entire lifestyle is regimen now. Barracks, bases, bed cots, bunkers, bomb drills and biding his time. The military takes him away from everything he knows and puts him on a schedule so numbing, he doesn’t even notice when weeks turn to months unless it’s by the change in terrain under his regulation boots.

It all changes, but doesn’t. He gets used to some things right before he’s assigned to something else and has to start all over again. He ships from one camp to the next. 

But Hux is always with him. 

In his pocket, on his screen, over his phone, through his mail. “The girl back home,” his squadron tease him. And Ben laughs the first time, before blushing the rest.

“Solo.”  
  
“Hux.”  
  
It’s over the phone this time.

Ben collapses in a bunk, sweat-slicked, shirtless, hair tied from his face to keep out the humidity from leaking onto his cheeks. He ran eight laps before he got called in for the phone. 

“I’m sending you over a box of things to sign that should arrive by Monday, and I need it back by the following week.”  
  
“A box.” He huffs, staring at the ceiling. “Can’t you do it online? I like it when I can just do that e-signature shit.”  
  
“No. Just sign with a pen.”  
  
“Can’t you scan them for me?”  
  
“What am I? Your mother?”  
  
“I’m just asking— I don’t exactly have a lot of time—”  
  
“Oh, excuse me, let me just sign them for you dearest, before I’m thrown into jail for perjury,” 

“Fuck you.” He rolls onto his side, closing his eyes in frustration at the pet name that makes his skin burn hot. His stomach rolls and he feels nervous. Or awkward. He chalks it up to being teased like an ugly high-schooler all over again.  
  
“Just sign them as you can, and send them when you can.”

Hux sounds similarly exhausted and they go oddly quiet for a few moments, while Ben blinks at nothing, listening to the drills outside. He wonders if Hux is still in that tiny, stuffy office with no windows. Where his father had shoved him. The bottom rung of a ladder Brendol had hoped his son would never climb. 

“What time is it there?” He asks idly. 

“2:32 p.m.”

A few hours ahead. 

“Are you at work?”  
  
“No, actually, I had to call you on my lunch. Father’s been a little paranoid lately.”  
  
“Sorry,”  
  
“It’s not an issue.”

“Okay.” 

They’re silent again. And before Kylo can work up enough nerve to ask Hux how he is, or what he’s been up to (anything, really, anything). Hux is making some excuse, reminding him of the deadline, and hanging up.

* * *

 

His third shore-leave is riddled with court appointments. 

Hux actually picks him up at the airport, military rags and all, and drives him straight to a hearing he wasn’t aware of. 

“Put that suit on.” 

“What? I don’t have one.” 

Ben doesn’t also mention the ridiculous notion of changing out of combat boots and a uniform in the small passenger seat of a luxury town car. 

“The one in the back.” 

There is one, hanging in a dry-clean bag on the door.

“I’m supposed to be on vacation,” He changes as awkwardly as predicted he would, knees jamming into the glove box and elbows marking the window. “Fuck.” 

Hux says nothing as they drive, eyes forward, those blue-green-grey colored irises changing with each reflection of the road.

“There’s a slight issue that needs ironing with the terms of the will. I just need you present as I talk to a judge about terminology.” 

“What does that mean?”

“Your grandfather says his heir shall inherit his legacy, and there’s a debate about what that includes.” 

“The house—”

“Yes, yes, the house, his boat, his clothes, his money, all of it—I’m going to get it all filed under that term don’t worry.” 

“Good.” 

Ben arches his back, thumbs sliding his pants up over his boxers, before sitting and buttoning up his shirt. It feels expensive, like that milky smooth feel of paper vellum. (His mother's stationary.) 

Hux glances at him, and Ben catches his eye, the first time in months.

He looks good too. Hair wet slicked liked he’d just gotten out of the shower. It made Hux look more severe, as did the sharp cut of his white collar and inky dark blazer. There’s cufflinks on his wrists. Tiny little gold H’s that remind him of the bullet casings from the B16 rifles at camp. 

But Hux doesn’t say anything, so Ben ties his tie in silence.  

It turns into more than one meeting. They meet with a company archiver for Skywalker INC first, before having to take copies of those files to a notary, and then back again, before meeting with a judge. 

They jog from building to building, Hux not above rushing through a square of businessmen and Ben honestly surprised the shorter man can move as fast as he does, trying not to admit by the end of it that he's panting despite having been training drills only days ago. 

When they finally stop, Ben sees a side of the man he hasn’t before.

“My client, Mr. Solo, is not looking to inherit. He’s looking to protect integrity.” 

“Hux, the terms define—”

“Nothing, they define nothing because they were written in an era of assumption.” 

Ben stares, useless and awed. He stares, listens, watches. Hux talks circles, so perfectly groomed and well tailored its like watching a debut play, rehearsed to such a degree it looks easy. Real. 

Ben remembers, immediately, that Hux is the son of the most renowned law firm, that the man had probably gone to good schools. Maybe even ones with preppy uniforms where they called each other “chap,” He’s in a league Ben just doesn’t understand. 

The will is amended. They stay on track.

Hux talks to him, encouragingly, about the next steps on the drive. About starting online college courses, and taking tests. 

Ben doesn't retain much information beside the oddly endearing way Hux’s accent clips over the words “oral inductions,” with lips pursing before splitting thinly, the hiss of his s’s lingering in the air. 

When they drive up to his family home, Ben hefts out his service bag and hesitates, “The suit.”

Hux is already gearing from Park to Drive, “I had it ordered for you, keep it.” 

Ben stays in the driveway and watches the car disappear, wondering if he should have said thank you, or invited him inside.


	8. "Solo" Part 2

  _2 years prior_

When he gets deployed, he assumes he won’t see Hux until his service break.

But the man shows up, on base, 8 thousand miles from the city, in his freshly pressed suit and a half-assed, shrugged-on bullet vest.

“Solo, your wife is here!”

He’s face down in the dirt, mid push-up, before his commander tells him, and his eyes scale up the polished Italian leather shoes to his face.

“Hello, Ben.”

There are hoots and hollers from his squadron, but he really can’t hear them over the surprise of what he’s seeing. Hux.  A veneer oil painting of a man in the middle of the desert.

They retreat to the ammunitions tent to talk to privately. Ben clears away a plastic crate for the lawyer to perch on, delicate legs crossing primly before unloading a briefcase.

“There's no place with desks?”

“You could have just called.”

“My father is dead.”

Ben stares. Sweat and dirt feeling gritty on his face, standing a head above the man. His lips part, but he can’t make out any emotion in the statement, so he isn’t sure how to react. It feels much hotter today than it usually does.

“I dunno what to say Hux—”

“At least congratulate me.”

Ben frowns, but nods, “Congratulations,”

“Thank you, Solo.”

Brendol Hux had a heart attack, alone, and had lost too much oxygen for the doctors to resuscitate. Hux, the only Hux now ( _the_ Hux, officially) had been immediately anointed (was that the word? Or was that for royalty?) as the chief executive officer, CEO, of Hux LLC. As mandated by some legal contract.  
  
“It wasn’t his will. It was in the company contract.”

“He gave it to you after all?”  
  
“No, I earned it.”

Ben didn’t question further than that. Hux was level with him, he’d stood, and his eyes looked emptier now than they ever did. However it was that Hux got what he wanted, it didn’t really matter now. And he was doing the same for Ben. So he said nothing more.

Sweat rolled down the back of his neck, and Ben shifted, scraping his palms through his hair and wondering how Hux still looked so pristine and dry, standing there in a suit worth more money then the entire base got from federal funding over a decade.

“So.” Ben tried. “You came all this way just to tell me that.”

Hux’s nose crinkled and Ben felt his stomach fall. He was always so fucking horrible at talking. His mother had a knack for saying things as if reading from an internal teleprompter. She gave advice better than scripted tv-shows that taught children morality. It was simultaneously something he was grateful for and something he dreaded. She was always right, and it made you feel like shit. Made you feel stupid.

No, he got the Solo technique of blubbering his way around sentences whilst dodging any emotion whatsoever. His father had a better handle on it though. Han could at least commit to his apathy. Ben felt everything. 

“No, of course not.” Hux snapped, a clipped tone that matched the noise of his briefcase clasp unlatching.  
  
“Not that I don’t appreciate—”   
  
“Oh, please.”

Ben’s hands fisted, waiting as Hux pulled out a folder.

“I’m bringing you the entire case for the Skywalker account.”

The folder was clean and crisp, with a seal on it he hadn’t seen before. An emblazoned ‘H’ in red, with a modern looking black geometric shape to frame it. Nothing like the garish golds and silvers from all the other files he had.  

Ben wondered how far Brendol Hux had been lowered into his grave before Armitage thought it enough to start changing everything.

“You’re an official client of the company now and I can get into trouble if you’re found without copies of your legal work. In addition, the entire company is at your leisure. I can have attendants on the case too, though I won’t. The board knows too, as do the Skywalker chairmen.”

As new as it looked, it was heavy in his hands, and Ben knew its insides were as old as the blood in his veins.

“What does that mean?”

“It means this is going to be a lot easier and a lot harder all at once,” Hux warned, and stepped close.

God, they were the same height, weren’t they? Sometimes Ben forgot. Sometimes Hux seemed so much taller, and others, so little. Right now they felt even.

“You’re going to be in the news. A young, sullen bachelor the heir to the biggest company in the world? It’s going to be invasive. However, with father dead, I have much more control over how the media is spun. And I can save your hide from the shareholders.”

Sullen. Ben swallowed. Mouth twitching. Perhaps he should smile more.

“Okay.”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing. Your grades have been impeccable, and military service is a safe place away from the press. It’s your vacation timing that will be the most tricky, so if you have any questions, you have my number.”

Hux was already saying goodbye, that’s what it felt like, but Ben was so taken aback by the revelation that the man had been checking his grades, and that he’d been _praised for his grades_ , for the first time ever, he wasn’t sure how to stall it.

“Yes. I do. T-Thanks, I’m, thanks.”

“Yes, of course.” Hux’s hand reached out and Ben tensed, flexing, not knowing what to expect but expecting something. His heart thudded.

Hux tapped his shoulder. Fingers soft and light, delicate, nothing like the desperate grip of his mom or the heavy thud of his dad. Nor was it the rough but welcome nudge or push from his fellow men in arms.

Hux tapped him like one might tap a light bulb to see if it was on. Not too roughly to break it, but enough to make the glass clink.

“Not long now, Solo.”

“Yeah.”

He walked him out to the helicopter. The rutters too loud and forceful for any sort of intimacy, he bent low and awkward and squinted his eyes past the screeching winds and blowing sand, Hux looking undisturbed and unaffected as he hoisted himself in with the other CO’s of the squadron, donning name-brand sunglasses and oversized muffs.

Hux crossed his legs, even in an armed EVAC Vehicle.

* * *

Hux had been right, it did get a lot harder.

But not in the ways he expected.

He was all over the news, but it hadn’t affected him much when he had been overseas. Surrounded and humbled by his COs and his squadron who either already knew his story, or didn’t care.

It had been his family that had given him the trouble.

They’d known. They had to have known. As much as they wanted to throw on shocked and offended faces, they must really think he was a fucking idiot to believe that they hadn’t known this entire time.  

He shook his head, shuffling his duffle bag with a batch of socks, a few falling to the floor. He left them, turning to his bed to grab some of his fresh laundry.

There had been a handful of nights just like this one, years ago, when he was much louder and angrier. The house had always been full of yelling and screaming about the same fucking topic. And yet as soon as he mentioned the name change, they’d acted like they didn’t even have any idea.

Yeah. The name.

He supposed that’s what Hux meant by the easy part. It had taken only a few hours that morning.

He’d already been Ben Skywalker for six hours.

“Which was easy, and great, because now the—”

“Wait. You changed your name?”  
  
“Yeah. I just said. Yes, that was always a part of the plan.”  
  
“You can’t do that.”

“I already did, mother. It’s done.”

“Don’t talk to me like that.”

“What do you mean, change it? What for?”

For the fucking house. The same fucking house he’d talked about growing up. The one Luke mentioned once. One time. Just enough times to put a faraway goal in a kid’s brain. The one he’d dreamed about, alone in his room, listening to his parents sigh exhaustively about him, the one he imagined to be big and empty, empty for him and him alone. One with old books to read and nice paper to write on. A house of his own. A place for him to be. Somewhere to fucking belong because God knows he wasn’t a fucking Organa with grades like that and no speaking skills and hell if he wasn’t a fucking a Solo when he didn’t take interest in fucking law enforcement—

He stopped packing, throwing the clothes from his grip, torquing his whole body just to throw a punch right into the goddamn fucking wall.

It cracked. Loud and then silent in the night. His knuckles hummed. The drywall crumbled beneath his skin, pinching him.

Well, that was fucking dumb.

He heard a door close downstairs. And footsteps.

But he wasn’t going to continue arguing. Not after the dramatic scene that had been family dinner. He’d patch the wall himself later. Without having to see the unsurprised disappointment in his mother’s eyes.

He climbed out a window, feeling 16 again, taking off down the suburban streets of his upbringing.And suddenly he felt more choked up and alone here at 10 o’clock at night than he had staring at his father’s blank and hurt face when he’d said he’d tossed Solo aside like the empty thing it had always been. Just like the rest of the world had. (More or less. He’d been shouting it.)

Eyes blinking fast, nose feeling cold, he shuffled his phone from his pocket and dialed. It answered on the second ring. As usual.

“Yes?”

“Hey—Hux— yeah, listen, can… Can you meet me somewhere?”

They met at a crap diner. Well, they met at the stoplight outside his neighborhood, and then drove to the 24hr diner, where they sat across from each other in badly cracked vinyl chairs.

Hux sighed, flipping the laminated menu. It wobbled.

He looked just as prim as he ever did, even this late into the evening, though Ben wouldn't put it past the man to have come from another meeting.

“Sorry.” He said, thinking now that that may have been the case.

“For?” Hux didn’t even look at him.

“It’s late.”

“I’m awake.”

That was that then. He sniffed. Louder then he meant to and tried to hide it with a brush of his fist. That was what finally got the lawyer's attention and suddenly those chromatic eyes were all his and he wasn’t sure he wanted them to be (he did.)

“This was bound to happen sooner or later, Solo.”   
  
“You don’t have to call me that, I’m not a fucking Solo anymore.”  
  
“If you think I’m going to waste my time enunciating the comedic noise that ‘Skywalker’ is, every time I address you, you’re wrong.”  
  
“I might as well be a fucking— foster—orphan child. Whatever.”   
  
“Don’t be so depressing. And orphans are wards of the state. They still have last names. Or numbers.”   
  
“How do you know?” He was being a child. It wasn’t a real question anyway. (Hux knew everything.)   
  
“I happen to know one and she told me.”

The waitress came and they ordered. Hux did. For both of them. She was pretty quick with the drinks too (No one was there.) After that it was just quiet. Old brass music played throughout the cheap lighting around them and Hux occasionally sipped his coffee. Ben tried catching the water droplets perspiring on his glass before they leaked onto the table.

“So…” Ben rolled his lips, thinking of anything. Something. Anything to say to Hux. His lawyer. His only connection these past 3 years.

His friend.

“How’s work?”

Hux actually smiled. It looked weirdly conniving, sure, but he still smiled.

“It’s progressive. There had to be a lot of changes. Mostly in management in staff. In location. In structure. Process. And—in a lot of areas, actually.”   
  
“Yeah?”

“It has actually become so efficient once released from the leash of age that it’s become rather boring.” Hux ended, lamely, staring at his coffee as if he’d only just realized this from the cup itself.

“Huh.”  

And then they were both quiet.

It wasn’t until the food came that Hux seemed once more appeased. But despite the burning urge to talk, to ask, fuck, anything, just—something worth it. Something worth this anxious unknowing. He was so close to not being alone, alone in an empty, dreamed-up, far-away house, and yet far enough by dint of his own ridiculous awkwardness, that he could never think of anything to say.

Hux talked a little for the both of them. He talked about the design of the plates, the mismatched decor of varying time periods, and the unhelpful length of his tie.

And god, Hux was so good at talking. 

Ben learned Hux's father _had_ actually sent him to boarding school (the plates looked similar to those), and he’d studied to be an architect for a while (so he knew what period the restaurant was trying to emulate), and that he had a recently won a court case (his personal assistant had bought him the tie as a congratulations.)

Hux could say so much by not saying much at all. 

Ben said nothing. In turn.

It wasn’t until they were back in the quiet of the familiar town car, turning neighborhood corners to a house Ben didn’t want to go back to that he said anything.

“Are you busy tomorrow?”  
  
“I have a date. Why?”

It wasn’t actually a surprise. Maybe that’s why he didn’t feel upset about. (He did anyway.) Because of course he did. Look at him. Of course he had dates. And friends. And a job. Things to do. Places to be.

Ben nodded.   
  
“No reason, just asking.”   
  
“I will see you off to your return plane. I can bring the Manor’s assessment then. So you can look at some photos of it.”

It was said plainly, but Ben felt the words ease a pain in the smallest way it could.  
  
Ben stared at the man, looking into mirror eyes and feeling his own water, blur. He blinked fast, trying to catch the droplets before they leaked down his face.

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Goodnight Solo.”

Solo.

“Night. Hux.”

Hux. Like his father too. But not at all. Ben was nodding, even as the car drove away.

* * *

It went fast after that.

Or maybe it just felt that way. Deployment kept him busy. Days tended to turn into shades of blue when they were all more or less the same. A wash of navy ink or a pair of inidigo sunglasses filtering over weeks gone by.

He saw Hux less. Spoke less.

In fact, in the following year it was more him making calls, than getting them. He’d started getting called by the notary and associates directly too. And then he’d call Hux immediately after, who’d pick up after several rings, or not at all.

Busy with the new promotion. Probably. Right. Almost two years after. Yeah.

“I keep getting calls for the fucking boat title and I can’t do that from here—”  
  
“Oh blast—yes, let me take care of it—”   
  
“Where are you?”   
  
“What do you mean where am I? I’m sitting in a parking lot. Why does it matter?”   
  
It wouldn’t and he’d back down, flushed and self-conscious, swallowing his own lips before pursing them in annoyance. (Most calls were like this now. Embarrassing.)

But they made progress. With Skywalker hanging over him, another rank badge to pin on his uniform, things just got easier. Financially. Especially.

Money sort of just appeared in his account one day and upon inquiry Hux had laughed at him.

“What did you think was going to happen?”

Immediate effect of inheritance, courtesy of his grandmother, apparently. He hadn’t even known grandpa had been married, let alone that she had been rich in her own right. Or that she deemed her own small legacy should be immediately passed to their offspring. His uncle and his mother really had been stupid. Prideful, and stupid.

It became so ingrained, signing papers, running drills, calling Hux, working out, transferring information, taking tests, memorizing essays, and walking patrols, that when it all started to end it was almost baffling.

His classes ended first. Online, eventually, the assignment emails and forum posts just stopped. He took his last test during his off hours, in the armory tent, eating lunch.

He got a confirmation that his grades for his final semester were processing and that was that.

And then his deployment ended.

He’d have to take a plane into his first camp. For his exit ceremony. They gave him a ticket and a parade uniform. He’d said goodbye to his squadron early in the morning.

In fact, he’d been so preoccupied with it, that it wasn’t until he was buttoning up his collar in the small camp barracks, and watching other returning soldiers talk to their families as they arrived to watch the ceremonies in their fancy clothes, that he realized he hadn’t even told Hux.

He hadn’t told his parents either. But neither of them had called him. And neither of them would want to see him get a service award pinned over his heart. No. He’d just see them when he walked into the house, unannounced. And then he’d live in that hell whilst his case finished. And then he’d move.

It was going to be awful and he'd avoided thinking of it the entire last month.

The soldiers all walked out, summer heat burning into wool and polyester before filing down the grass to an outside stage where a few COs stood ready.

He was proud of himself actually. All this. His grandfather had done the same thing. And if he imagined it hard enough, then there actually was someone there with him, watching him complete all this hard wo—holy fuck—H— Hux—

Hux had come.

Ben could see him as he took the stairs up the stage, sitting, cross-legged, drinking a coffee in the afternoon sun, sandwiched between marine wives and their children holding up signs for their husbands and fathers.

Hux had no sign for him, but Ben still waved, dumbly, staring with excitement as his name was called for his badge and salute. He almost forgot to do so, raising his hand hastily to his CO. (He almost didn’t notice them say Solo too)

It seemed to take forever, but when it ended and the guns fired, and the crowd rushed the stage, Ben pushed passed, barreling through to meet his lawyer in a rush.

He found the red hair as easy as he found his footing, grasping a thin, perfectly tailored and suited arm, swinging it wide enough for him to hug. It was fast, stupid, and impulsive. But he did. Stepping back as quick as he could. Enough to say he had. Enough to curl his arm around a thin back and smell the strong sting of hair gel.

“Congratulations!” Hux yelled. Not in excitement. Only to be heard. There were F-35s in the air, screeching from their flyover.

“Why are you here!?”

“I was invited!”

A few kids screamed past them, and Ben missed something Hux was saying as he leaned down to the grass and lifted a bag. It was small.

“What?!”  
  
“I have something for you!”  

The bag was shiny with tassels and red tissue paper. A present. Hux had got him a present.

Ben fumbled, his formal white gloves too thick for his already thick fingers. He tried not to stare at the fact that Hux was watching him, waiting, making him fucking nervous when he pulled out a box and had to open that too, right there, in a crowd of people celebrating and taking pictures. It was small and red, and it fit in his palm. His brows hurt with his concentration on it.

He dropped the lid and Hux leaned down to retrieve it when he pulled out a key.

“What’s this?” He asked, quieter now that the planes had gone.

“The house.”

“What?”  
  
“It’s the key to the house, Ben, congratulations.”

He couldn’t seem to exhale.

“What?”  
  
“The damn house, Ben, it’s done, it’s yours.”  
  
“But we still have the chair meeting, and the judge—what about my courses?”

Hux was shaking his head. A pale hand pulling the key out with delicacy and pressing it into Ben’s open fist before pushing it into his chest.

“I did all of it, it’s done. Your diploma is sitting in the car.”

“But—”  
  
“I did it _all_ , Ben, you’re him. You were officially the head of Skywalker INC last week but I thought I’d come in person to—”   
  
The key stabbed his palm as he clenched it, wishing desperately for that scant few inches that would make him taller than his lawyer so he could look over his head, or something, anything, to stop himself from staring at the unending sea of glass reflections that was Hux’s eyes. Anything then staring at those fucking mirrors. At staring at himself.

He couldn’t watch himself cry.

He stared at Hux's lips instead.

“Solo? Ben? Are you listening to me?”  
  
“Yeah, thanks—yeah—”   
  
“I have an invitation for you too—”

“Yeah?”  
  
“Yes, for my wedding.”

_Oh._


	9. Lake House

There wasn’t much grass where she grew up. Mostly dirt.

Grass is great though. It’s soft, if kind of itchy, but chilly, and it smells good.

She takes off her shoes, turning to toss them back at the house, where they thud onto the courtyard stones with a sound she can’t hear because the music from inside drowns it out.

“What are you doing?”

She turns to smile up at Ben Skywalker. He’s enormous; tall and almost scary looking, out here under the night sky where she can barely make out his softer features. Nothing but the big shadowy ink of his hair and strong shoulders stand out, even his pale skin looks dark shade of teal, like part of the sky itself.

“It’s not far right?”

His black, puppy eyes look more worried than she thinks is necessary for nothing more than a walk.

“I’m not sure, I’ve never been there before.” 

Rey laughs. Of course he hasn’t.  
  
“Well I guess we’ll find out then, come on!”   
  
As soon as she starts moving she starts laughing. The grass is wet from dew. It’s damper out here in the country than it is in the city, maybe because of all the trees, or the lake itself. Not cold, though her skin still breaks out in goosebumps as she runs a little, skips, practically.

“Come on!” She tries again, turning to skip backward, yelling at the great big shadow following her.

Ben doesn’t call back, lumbering after her, head down.

“Oh, come on, it’s gonna be fun, and at least by the time we get back Huxley will have everything set up.”

“I should help him.”

Rey laughs, because the more she is around Ben, as she had been all day, the more predictable he becomes. And obvious. His bias towards Huxley’s company is almost jarring, even if they had been friends for 4 years.

It’s actually surprising she hadn’t heard of him before, well it’s not. And she _had_ heard of him, just maybe not in the right context. And if Ben’s appearance and manner had anything to do with it, she was beginning to suspect that Huxley hadn’t ever thought of the man in the right context either.

“You really think he’s going to let you help him?”

Ben looks up at her then, she can tell, because his shoulders hunch, and a glint of the moonlight far above them slices in the reflection of his eyes.

“It would be polite to offer at least.”

“He likes being the host of his own stay, let him.”

“What about you?”

Rey frowns, pausing. She’d been walking backwards this whole time. Ben stops too, careful to maintain the gap between them.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you— your, what are you, what—”

And then her brows are raised, because, wow, Ben, really is not great at this.

“You haven’t, I haven’t— I haven’t hosted you, helped you, or anything, yet—”

His shoulders rise, chin dipping low, hair falling forward to tickle his cheeks, eye looking anywhere but at her. Was he that unconscious of himself? Or just that nervous? Weird. Rich men weren’t usually this way. Neither were men that were as big as him.

Hadn’t he been a soldier too? Weird.

“Well, you’re doing that now. So come on, lets go—”

She reached for his hands, but they were in his pockets, so instead her fingers curl around his wrists and tug, insistently.

“Mrs. Hux—”

It’s weird, being called that so much. It sounds like she’s a teacher. She means to continue on correcting him, and looks up to search for his eyes to do so. They aren’t hard to find.

Everything about Ben Skywalker is big. His house is big, his legacy is big, _he’s_ big, his shoulders, his legs, his jaw and nose, and his eyes. His hands too, are enormous in comparison to her hands. They give way at her tugging to let her pull them into her palms, and she can only grab four fingers of him. They’re thick and wide, in comparison to Hux’s thin and long pianist fingers, the ones she’s used to.

She remembers her husband threading his hands through Ben’s, finicky and precise as they taught him how to dance just moments ago. Or better yet, Ben threading his through Hux’s, unyielding and encompassing.

She’s grinning then, when finally corrects him, “Rey.” 

“Rey.” He repeats. “I should call you Mrs. Hux.” He says this but they’re walking again, her backwards once more, and him holding her hands, so she considers it a win.

“Hux is Hux. I’m Rey.”

“Y-Yeah but I don’t, uh,” He looks down at their fingers and flexes instinctively. She pulls him along so he doesn’t ask about it. “I don’t call Hux, Armitage.”

“I don’t either. That’s why he should be the only Hux. And I’m the only Rey.”

"Yeah, but, Hux is his father too,”

“That guy is dead.”

“I guess.”

“ _You_ aren’t _your_ dad.” She points out, not really knowing if that’s true but believing it all the same. People weren’t their parents.

Ben says nothing. His fingers curl in hers. She turns around in his hands and looks out past the thick of some trees to see a gleam where the waterfront might be. God this place was so massive and so beautiful.

“I’ll make you a deal.” She says, because it's weirdly quiet now, and no one should have to think about Brendol Hux Sr. that long. “I’ll call you Ben if you call me Rey.”

The hands in hers squeeze.

“You could call me Solo.”

“If I call you Solo you have to call me Rabbit, and Hux; Huxley.”

She has to look at his face for that one and sure enough he’s red. Or a darker blue, actually, since the night sky jas him in shades of navy and indigo. He looks like a painting made by the same ones of the lady in his house. Ancient and secretive. Sweet but sad.

“No.” He refuses. It’s soft though, like he might laugh or cry.

“Ben then.”

“Rey.”

They walk through the brush in silence. And it would be unsettling, but Ben’s silence isn't heavy, or too awkward. He’s shy, she thinks, but not morose. And their hands joined together make it companionable.

It isn’t that quiet either. She’d actually surprised to find that nighttime in the country isn’t as quiet as the horror movies make it out to be. 

“What is all that noise?”

“Birds.” Ben answers, and he stops them to look up around the canopy of towering pines. “It said on the internet that there's a herd that comes out here in the winter, because we don’t get any snow.”

“You mean a flock?”

Ben shrugs, her wrists jerks with the action.

“What kind of birds sing at night?”  
  
“I dunno, I looked it up once when I couldn’t sleep with them outside, but I forget the name.”

What sort of billionaire corporation tycoon looks up bird facts in the middle of the night? 

“You are so weird.” She can’t help herself, it’s true.

Ben seems to crumble into himself, his mouth shutting in a purse, that make his lips bigger. He looks sad, but his brows crease in anger and he spits out his response like a petulant cat hissing from being pet.

"You’re the one with no shoes on.”

“I don’t need them.” She pulled her hand away from his, and despite his annoyed expression he still chased her, as if reluctant to let go, before giving up.

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Where’s this place anyway?”

She keeps walking, the ground sloping downward toward the banks of water. She doesn’t look at Ben, assuming he’d follow her as she sunk her toes into the grass that slowly became wetter, colder, and more mushy beneath the closer she got.

“Careful.” Ben calls when she hits the water.

It’s freezing.

She squeals.

“Oh my god it’s like ice!”

“Get out!”

She turns and laughs at Ben, his angry face given away to worry now, hands reaching out like he might grab her.

“No way!”

“You’ll get sick and Hux will blame me.”

“I’ve never been to a lake before.”

It’s big, at least to her, a massive expanse of glittering blackness that crests around both sides of her. There’s more trees in the distance, bordering the banks like filigree. It reminds her of the victorian lace like decor of the manor. What had Huxley called it? Gables?

“It’s beautiful.” It looks fake almost. Like the water is cellophane and the sky velvet with little christmas lights inside. Or maybe a big pool inside a stadium with a ceiling so high it looks wider then it is.

“What’s the lake called?”

Ben doesn’t come into the water, but she hears him shift as if he means to.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lakes have names?”

“I guess but I wouldn’t know.”

“Huxley says you own it.” She reminds him, nose wrinkling.

Ben looks incorrectly surprised, eyes flickering up over her head. His hand raises to grasp at neck as he surveys the water. He looks young and for a moment she wonders what he was like as a high schooler.

She pictures him in a hoodie and backpack, maybe with a skateboard. High schoolers rode skateboards didn't they? They did in all the tv shows.

Hux had photos of himself at that age, cute and prim, but his matching uniform doesn’t seem correct when she imagines it on Ben.

“I… I haven’t seen any paperwork about it. Maybe it had a name before grandpa or… or maybe he renamed it.”

“Maybe he didn’t and that means, you, _can_.”

Ben looks almost scared. Overwhelmed.

Rey figures, conclusively, he wasn’t always this rich.

“That's it too then, yeah?”  She leans forward, pointing at the shadow of a house veering on the edge of the bank to her left. It’s a weird, smoothed spot in the foliage of trees, like a paper cut-out.

“Yeah…” Ben’s shoes scuff the mud as he leans to look.

“Come on.”

It’s as big as a proper house, bigger, maybe, with a pier circling around its bottom. They walk the water banks, staring at it, Rey in the cold shallows and Ben shadowing her on the dry land.

It’s a little simpler then the mansion, it’s wood paneling isn’t black and gold, but a soft charcoal, with stone steps seeped in mud leading to it’s verdana.

Ben pulls the keys out as Rey hops to and fro on the wood pier, the jingling of him turning the lock like a funny song to her drying off her feet.

He has to push open the doors a bit with his shoulder. They swing open like a barn might, and dust falls in on his head. She follows in after, but it’s pitch black beyond him, darker than the night sky and horribly dry.

“Is there even anything in here?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He straightens when she hands grab at his elbow. “Watch it.”   
  
“You watch it.”

They’re a bit of a stumbling mess as they enter, Ben raising his hands away from her as Rey grasps onto him, her feet cringing with each new texture. Stones, wood, stones, carpet— “Oh my god where are the lights.”

“Get off me and I’ll—”

She doesn’t, afraid suddenly to stub her toe, so they crane and lean, Ben moving this way and that until he hits a wall successfully. It's a loud snap, an old, big, switch, maybe, until the world around them bursts into a golden picture of tungsten lamps. They flicker on in succession, like the rows of a warehouse.

She shouldn’t have been worried. It’s sparse, empty, even. Massive white sheets cover most of the furniture, and Rey can’t tell if there might couches and tables under them, or just stocked up crates of things. It’s ghost-like. And the air around them shimmers with misuse. She spies a few corners of grey haze. Cobwebs or dust mites.

“I don’t think…this was ever used.”

She has to agree with him. The place looks even more abandoned then some of the rooms back in the house, with bare stone walls and shuttered up windows that looked caked in place. She leaves his side all the same, venturing in past towers of white sheets and wood boxes.

“This is huge. Big enough for ten families, or like 50 people.”  She mentions, thinking of how many sleeping bags or beds could fit in rows along the walls.

Ben shakes his head. “It’s not that big. Besides, it’s more of a winery.”

As he mentions it, they do, indeed, come across wine. There are barrels, giant wooden ones on pallets, laid on their sides down the row. And above that, the triangle cubby-hole wine racks that harken back to the wine room back at KB’s.

“Bingo!” She exclaims, hurrying over to the walls to inspect them. They’re dusty, but wine is wine.

“What does Hux like?”

Rey slides a bottle out to look at a label before sliding it back in.

"I don’t know, normally he drinks champagne.”

“You don’t know?”

Ben sounds incredulous and she looks over her shoulder to confirm the emotion, his big eyes looking almost suspiciously at her.

"How long have you two been married?”

She has to think about it, but she doesn’t get a chance too.

“Wait nevermind. It’s only been two years.”

“How’d you know that?”

Ben’s looking at his feet at first, before he passes her down the rows of racks and reaches for a bottle.

"Does he like a Pinot? Or a, uh, cabernet?”

Hux must have told him. They’d known each other longer then she had, right? But Ben’s avoidance says something and his ears hidden in his hair look sunburnt. When she doesn’t answer and those guilty looking large eyes dart to catch her staring he shakes his head and looks away.

“I forgot, I, had, or, I remembered because, uh,” His hand slides along the racks the make the bottles clink, like a xylophone. “I was, invited...to the, his, or, yours—your wedding.”

“You were invited?”

Maybe she should have known, because Ben looks at her with slight confusion and maybe even accusation. But she didn’t. It was a surprise.

“Yeah but, you know, I figured, it wasn’t— he wasn’t— I just told him I couldn’t—”

“Why didn’t you come?”

“Well it’s not as if, I mean, come on, it's,” Ben turns to press his back against the winery wall and the bottles all clash, jittering in their spots as he gestures with his hands dismissively, shoulders hunching and head shaking vigorously. “It's not like it was, I wasn’t, he invited me, sure, I mean, I got the card, er, the invite, rsvp, yeah, that, I got that, but I wasn’t—uh, it wasn’t— I figured he didn’t want, uh, work there, he’s— I hadn’t met you, it’s, we’re, we’re just business associates.”

Rey thinks of the day, in the tiny little courtroom with Dopheld Mitaka officiating, Finn her Maid of Honor and Poe her bridesmaid. Hux had stood with no one, except Phasma, a stone-faced lawyer from the firm who had only been asked to be there to be the legal witness.

He had said that non of his family bore any closeness to him and she’d left it at that.

But he’d invited Ben Skywalker, and never told her.

She stared.

“I-I’m sure, he didn’t even notice. And—and not that I—I mean, c-congratulations, anyway, I bet, you know, it was beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

Ben swallows, looking relieved to see no offense on her. And she’s not. She doesn’t feel offended anyway. She feels insightful. Like she’d uncovered a secret.

She passes him to pull out another bottle, forgetting why they’d brought it up in the first place. He watches her like a hawk, head low and waiting, as if ready for her to call him out for his rudeness. It isn't until she starts handing him a few bottles that he moves on.

“Good year?” He asks on the third one.

“I don’t know, I don’t know anything about wine, I’m just picking the coolest looking labels.”  
  
He lets out a breath of air that sounds suspiciously like a chuckle.

“I figured you would know.”

“Why?” She asks, honestly curious as she pulls out another two.

“You look like…” Ben trails, staring at her face.

When he isn’t looking at the ground, or away from her, or he isn’t stuttering and shaking his head, Ben is actually pretty intense. It’s like he can read her thoughts, like through her eyes he can read words on the back of her skull. Like he’s finding something. His brows work, and his lips move sideways along each other. Even his height wavers, leaning to match her own stature as if to see her better.

It gives her time to appreciate the small facets of his face she can’t normally stare at without being impolite. Like the small flecks of moles under his eye, or the soft shade of a beard that might grow if he’d let it. Ben’s handsome. She can’t blame anyone for thinking so.

“You look like you would, I guess.”

“How’s that?”

She guesses it’s her clothes. It’s Hux that dresses her now, after all.

“You just look like someone I know, so, maybe because of them.” He turns away from her, rather quickly, and Rey is left staring at air. “Let me see if I can find a box or bag for all this.”

She lets him go.

He’d said that before, hadn’t he? Back when they met.

She looked like someone he knew.

 


	10. Dining Room

When he could no longer smell the bitter red of a 1884 chardenouney slipping down his throat, he thought perhaps he was drinking too much.

Rey was flushed across from him at the dinner table too though, her tanner skin golden yet pink, an accent color to the sound of her giggling.

“I don’t find it that funny.” He said, lips clipping his wine glass. His knife clattered on his half empty plate. Had he not finished his dinner? Maybe this was too much drink.

“It was hilarious, Ben. He screamed so loud, like, AHH!”

Ben. That was new.  His eyes flickered to Ben Solo as Rey imitated his reaction to a haunted house she had dragged him through last Halloween.

The former-marine, former client, current ~~acquaintance~~ friend was leaned over his own plate to stare at Rey, fist covering his smiling mouth. Lips amused but eyes nervous. Enamoured.

Hux rolled the word around in his head and in his glass. _Enamoured_. It sounded like it’s own brand of alcohol. But yes. It was the only word he could think of. Ben Solo was enamoured with his wife. His. The pronoun was confusing, but his own, Mr. Hux’s wife. Rey. They were married.

Was he explaining this to himself? 

Dear god, he was drunk wasn’t he?

Through no fault of his own, honestly, the two had come back from the lake house looking dewy eyed and carrying baskets full of bottles, and bottles of wine.

_“Do you plan on getting me sloshed?”_

_“It’s New Years.”_

So Rey was planning on getting sloshed too then. That was somehow reassuring. He’d felt like he’d needed something like this hours ago. Maybe she knew that. That would explain the abundance. She always knew him best.

There was something absolutely right about the way people said that about marriage. _‘You’re better half.’_ But ‘better’ wasn’t the right word. Enamoured was. No. Wait no, that was about the other thing.

Ben was enamoured with his better half. No. His more feminine half. The one with pink lips and a girlish smile.

Hux huffed into his glass as he tilted it back, the fog of his nose clouding the bowl as he downed his drink.

Oh boy.

“Don’t look at me like that, you made the challenge when you said you weren’t scared of anything.”

“I’m not.” He responded to the first half of her statement and didn’t hear the rest, not ready to divulge that he was thinking about Ben Solo admiring him in women’s clothes.

Oh god, was he? Had he started to think of that yet?

No.

His eyes shifted to the ~~boy~~ man, but Ben’s brown eyes were still glued to Rey.

In all honesty, he couldn’t blame him. Rey was something of a faucet of fascination. And he knew better then anyone how addictive that could be, how at ease she instantly made you. How cozy and comfortable. How pliant.

Hmm.

This wasn’t good. He was drunk. In and out of conversation at this now dinnerless dinner table. And he couldn’t quite remember what they were talking about as much as he could remember his several sexual experiences with Ben. No.

He shook his head.

Rey. He was thinking of Rey.

“Are you getting there?” Rey asked across the table.

“You okay?” Ben asked at the same time.

Both of them were looking at him with concern.

He glared.

“I’m getting “okay””

“You’re drunk.”

“So are you.” He accused.

Rey smiled. It was slow, but her blinking was fast. The lying face. He knew it on any stranger in a courtroom but knew it better on his wife. But what would she lie about.

“Yes.” She answered and turned to Ben too fast to have been done inebriated. “Can we stay here for the night?”

 _“What?”_  
  
Of course.

“Rabbit, darling, leave, leave Ben alone—”

“We can’t drive home like this on that dark road. And even if we did we can’t miss the countdown and the fireworks! That’s the best part. Plus we get to stay in this crazy haunted mansion.”

"It’s an estate.” Hux corrected.

“It’s not haunted.” Ben convinced.

“Sure. We should stay the night.” Rey ignored. 

Standing up from the table was a horrible affair, complete with clanking dishes and squealing wood floors. It grated through his brain, but Hux still did it, bringing his empty glass for the ride.

“I’m not staying in this dreary place, in one of those dreary rooms with no bed sheets, like some sort of posh insane asylum I’d put my f-father in, where he talks to the walls and wishes the banisters happy brithhday.”

Rey was about to fight his slurred declaration but didn’t have to.

“You could stay in my room.”

Everything went quiet. Or it already was. Houses like this were always so sickly silent. There was a ticking clock somewhere, not close, but just far enough that they could all measure each others reactions at Ben’s very generous, very forward acceptance of their rude intrusion.

“Really?” Rey asked and she turned in her seat, hands finding Ben’s on the table, smile wide. And with that move would there be any other answer from the man’s stunned and blushing face then,

“Y-yeah, I don’t, I mean, I can just, there’s a lot of room on the couch and I can just be out in the living room.”

“You want to sleep on the couch?” Hux asked, eyes narrowed in utter suspicion, and also because, honestly, the dining room lights seemed to be getting too bright.

“I’ve fallen asleep there a few times already.”

“Unnecess-sary.” He shook his head, free hand finding another heavy bottle on the bar at the far side of the room. Or would have. He grasped for it before he walked toward it and so had picked up nothing. Rey stood up suddenly, rounding the table to help him. “Oh please, rabbit, I don’t need your _waiting expertise_.”

“No, what you do need is a little water.”

He sighed, but didn’t object, hand finding her waist to follow her gently to the counter. She gave him a cold new glass, exchanging the empty wine. He ignored both to lean over with the best balance he could manage to kiss her forehead. She laughed in that cute, endearing way she always did, loud but short, and it just made him search out her lips too, kissing that sound to steal some of that happiness.

He came away smiling.

And caught Ben staring.

Ben wasn’t really new to the activity. Since they’d met, Ben watched and listened more then he spoke. It was an aspect to the man Hux was most familiar with. And sometimes it was in ways Hux might have considered a bit oblivious, rude even, if it weren’t for the way those eyes looked. Deep, dark and dewey. They were so obviously _listening,_ taking it all in. It made someone on the other end of them feel important.

He could be talking about the in’s-and-outs of copyright law and Ben would listen to him with all the intensity of someone telling him his life expectancy.

It was probably the most beautiful set of eyes Hux had ever seen.

It was hereditary. It had to be. Organa, Skywalker, they all had those same eyes. Maybe that’s what made them such successful ~~liars~~ politicians.

Right now though, he seemed to be seeing double the pairs of eyes. Or Ben had grown a second head.

“What are you two staring at?”

“What? No—I—”

His hand slipped down his wife’s bare arm to the curve onto her hip. Only one set of eyes followed.

Oh. The other was a painting.

This house had—

“Oh, it’s you.” Hux addressed the massive portrait of Padme behind her grandson, tipping his water glass like a toast to her non-presence.

That’s where those eyes came from. Well. _She_ had been a politician too, hadn’t she?

“Did you forget I was here?” Ben asked standing with offense even. Hux didn’t correct him though, maybe he had forgot a little bit. His hands left his wife to better hold his water and drink it quickly. Maybe he was out of sorts, acting like a loose floosey.

“Yeah, we are definitely staying here tonight.”

Hux didn’t correct her either, just drinking his water with only an unhappy look, before passing her completely to make his way to the living room.

He ignored their calls for him. If he wasn’t going to be able to have make a decision, then he would at least get started seeing what he was working with.

“Do you have cable installed then, Ben?”

“What?”  
  
“For the fireworks! It’s past eleven now. We don’t have a lot of time.”  
  
“I can put something on, yeah, with my computer.”  
  
“I can help you do that.”  
  
God, this living room was abysmal.

You couldn’t really even call it a room, crammed as it was into the kitchenette, and surrounded by some boxes.

It was clearly Ben Solo’s though. That was undeniable in the simpleness of department store, online-ordered, self assembled furniture. Something about it reeked of the man. The practicality maybe. The starkness of it. Nothing on the cushions or furniture but a small book. An operation manual for an HD flat screen. Which—

“Why is your tv on the floor?” he asked, stepping across the rug to stare at the large screen propped against the painted wallpaper. 

“You guys can wait here, I’ll just get my laptop and we can stream something—”  
  
“Yeah, why _is_ your tv on floor?”

“I just, I haven’t— it’s not something that’s—”

Hux turned in time to watch his wife also turn to stare at the stuttering boy. Ben had been stuttering a lot lately, matter of fact. Was _he_ drunk?  
  
“I haven’t gotten around to it. There’s the… painting, so-”  
  
The Hux’s seemed to turn at the same time to look again, this time at the painting in the center of the living room. Oanate and golden framed, Padme stared back at them, unimpressed.

“Rabbit?”

“Yep.”

Rey vaulted over the couch entirely, her little jumper slipping from her shoulder and back again, meeting him on the rug. He put his water down and they headed to the wall together, shoulder to shoulder.

“Oh— no, please, you guys don’t have too—”  
  
“Can you balance it okay?” Rey asked him, eyes teasing as they both grabbed a corner.

Hux huffed with his own teasing sneer. “It’s not my first _dance_ , darling.”

She just laughed and they hoisted it together. Well. Mostly. Rey was stronger than him  physically. He could feel her carry the bulk of the thing, his fingers only gently swaying the weight to help her set it down on the ground.

She put the tv up herself too, despite the fact Ben had come right up behind them to protest or to help—

And gods, he always forgot how tall he was. 

“You, really, I can—” Ben tried, arms raised high as if to steal the tv from Rey’s hands. But she was too quick and too efficient for him.

Hux just swirled his water as if it were wine, and enjoyed the fascinating sight of watching Ben’s forearm flex and hesitate, taut muscles going slack and that large adam’s apple bobbing with his shy swallow. 

“Too late.” He teased quietly.  
  
Ben glanced at him, mouth working and lips pursing. Hux watched the expression with a daziness he couldn’t control.  
  
“The cables come through from the other side?” Rey asked, turning.

And suddenly the three of them were all standing there, tightly knit, like a sports team huddling before a game or something, squeezed together for space.

"Uh.. yeah from the breaker room, it’s—””  
  
“Behind the laundry door?”

“Yeah.”  
  
Rey shimmied past, but Hux whined, leaning forward with closed eyes and an open mouth. Her heard her laugh, pausing only to give him the kiss he wanted, a short parting before she left the room to set the cables through the drywall.

Ben wasn't staring this time, or he had been, intently, before Hux looked back at him and he resolutely pointed his gaze at the portrait on the floor.

Was he being rude? Perhaps all this… kissing— was rude. It wasn’t something Hux normally displayed. It wasn’t really anyone’s business.

But Ben was different. Surely. Ben was his friend.

When it was silent enough to hear that ghostly clock ticking from somewhere in the house, Hux had to break it.

He looked down at Padme with Ben.

It was oil. And it wasn’t aging well. He could see the deep purples begin to warm in the glaze. The green tones of her skin obviously not the artist’s original intention. But it was still a well down likeness, from a photograph maybe, with embellishments.

Funny, he hadn’t ever seen much homages’ to the World’s most precious princess and senator. Turns out they had all just been here, hidden away.

He recognized her though. Not just from watching the tapes of her speeches or the recordings his school had shown of her, famous as she was. He recognized her like this, her hair, her eyes.

She looked like Rey.

Uncannily.

The likeness would almost be disturbing if the demeanor wasn’t so utterly different.

But she also looked like her grandson. Soft, sharp, intense, gentle— all at once. An impossible mix of qualities wrapped into a women’s visage. Ben just seemed a little more complicated. Another interpretation of those same qualities, but lost, marked. The messy hair and the more pronounced nose…

Ben looked like Padme if she had been a little less sure of herself. A little more insecure.

And…. if she had been a 6 foot 2 inch veteran male with a healthy push-up regimen.

“She’s beautiful.” He tried. 

"Uh—” Ben looked up, shocked.

Hux’s water glass clinked with the ice in it as he gestured to the painting. _Rey’s_ beauty was a given. And it was obvious Ben agreed. 

"Ye-yeah she… she really is.”

See?

"You look like her.”

Ben really looked at him then. His shoulders lowered. His breathing seemed to have stopped. Hux only noticed because that thick chest stopped fluctuating. And his face turned red, along with his ears and neck.

Maybe he was at least, a little tipsy too.

Either way, Hux held his ground.

“Thanks.”

He shrugged.

Rey yelled at them through the wall, and it startled them both at first, water splashing down Hux’s shirt as he lunged to grab Ben’s arm for safety when it seemed like Padme had started speaking to them, “Can someone turn this thing on? I can’t tell if I did this right if it’s not on!”  
  
“Fuck.” Ben whispered.

"Fuck, indeed, christ.” Hux agreed.  
  
“Anybody?”  
  
“Yes, yes, Rabbit, we’ll try it!”

 


End file.
